So, we’re well into the final months of 2026.
I’ve taken a week off work for a quick refresh before the final sprint to the end of the year.
Why do I need a week’s refresh? Well, I created an end-of-year to-do list and it’s stupidly ambitious. So, I thought grounding myself before taking that on made sense. Also, there was a bit of a gap in the diary 🙂
But one of the benefits of a week off is that it gives me time to focus on things that otherwise get neglected, including this blog. This post and my new page highlighting some of the organisations I support will be the basic deliverables from that time.
And the purpose of this post is some basic end-of-year reflection.
A productive year with my head up my arse
2026 was a year in which I firmly lodged my head in my own arse. But in a productive way.
I’ve spent a lot of time organising my knowledge, projects and ideas. I’ve got a new summary model that guides my teaching.
Pretty huh??!!
And I am gaining clarity on what kind of legacy I’d like to leave from my working life. For reference, I reckon I have at least another 10 years of good work in me, assuming I remain healthy and am not run over by the bus I catch to work.
All in all, it has been a very inward-looking year.
One of the key outputs of that process has been a prototype of BetterU Version 2.
For context, BetterU is the student wellbeing portal at Flinders University, and managing its content is a big part of my job. It started life as a blog in 2017, became its own website in late 2024, and we’ve been working hard on developing it over the past two years. This has included shifting it from being a blog that I mostly write, to a site taking contributions from the wider Flinders community, including students on placement with us from disciplines like Social Work, Public Health and Psychology.
Over the course of 2026, I’ve run all sorts of simulations in my head about what I want it to become, and the BetterU Version 2 prototype is an expression of that thinking. Noting that the specifics might not be terribly interesting to anyone outside the Flinders community, the basics are that I think BetterU can serve 4 main roles: a digital magazine about student success, a set of tools and resources to support teachers and academics embed wellbeing into curriculum, a living lab where we test and report on strategies for student success, and more streamlined navigation into support services.
(Interesting aside: even a few years ago, building a prototype like this would have been beyond me. Now AI can write pretty good HTML, pretty quickly.)
I got to the end of the prototype-building process feeling pretty good about myself. I was able to articulate my vision for where I wanted to take BetterU and bring it to life in a way that helped me show that to others. And I then assumed that 2027 would be about convincing others to let me build it.
But I suspect that assumption is wrong and thinking about it has highlighted a potential theme for my work in 2027.
Three decades, three questions
My working life can be roughly divided into two decades so far.
For the first decade (2007-2017), I was largely bringing other people’s projects to life. I worked in project and research roles and got pretty decent at understanding what others wanted and bringing my skillsets to making it happen, But, I was never really the lead on any of those projects. Other people were posing the questions, and I was helping answer them. I made contributions, of course, but what characterised the end of that period was a growing question: What do I want to build?
In the second decade (2017-2027), working at Flinders, I started answering that question. My role had a very broad remit (mental health promotion) which has provided significant scope and autonomy to pursue some of my own ideas. I’ve had the opportunity to deliver and write wellbeing programs, build campaigns, maintain a blog, teach, consult and even write support curriculum.
For me, psychologically, there has been something really important about this second decade. It has been a chance to prove to myself that I can develop my own ideas. That I wasn’t just a hired hand when it came to my work.
So, when I finished working on the BetterU V2 Prototype, it was a culmination of all that work. A representation of everything I’d learned, what I thought I could build, and what would be a good legacy to leave behind. The final piece of evidence (at least to myself) that I had something unique to offer.
So, yeah, I started informally spruiking it. “Here is this thing I want to build” I’d tell a few people and share it around. And for the most part, the response has been positive, but more in a “that’s nice” kinda way. I didn’t really find anyone excited by the idea or keen to get on board.
And out of those meh responses emerged a theme for 2027 and possibly the next decade of work. Decade 1 taught me I could help others bring their visions to life. Decade 2 reassured me I was capable of having a vision of my own and bringing it to life. An interesting question for Decade 3 therefore is Can I bring a collective vision to life?
Getting my head out
So, looking ahead to 2027, I’m keen to shift from the highly introspective space I’ve been occupying to properly understanding what others in the Flinders community would like to see for BetterU, or for this area of work more generally.
I’d like to know what resonates with students, teachers, academics and professional staff when thinking about academic success and the good life in higher education.
I don’t think it’s as simple as asking, “What would you like us to do with BetterU?” It’s more about understanding people’s relationship with the idea of success in higher education. What does success mean to them? What helps them achieve it? What gets in the way? At this stage I am considering individual interviews with staff and students to better understand their experiences, stopping once I start getting saturation of themes.
And then, once I feel like I have a better understanding of how the community feels about these topics, working out which of our resources, and which of the skills I’ve developed, might I leverage to build something with and for the community.
I’ll be honest. I have mixed feelings about the direction, even though I understand it to be a valid one. There was something comforting about getting my ideas organised to the point of a specific prototype (I also wrote a paper this year on what a modern wellbeing service in a university might look like – awaiting feedback on that at the moment). I liked that 2026 was really introspective and that clarity emerged from it. I enjoyed being in my own head. I enjoyed being immersed in my own vision.
But I am also acutely aware that clarity for me does not equal useful for others. Unless they are part of the conversation, I could end up building something that I love, that doesn’t help anyone else. And that isn’t the legacy I want to leave.
Thus, it is time to bring Decade 1 Gareth together with Decade 2 Gareth to build a collective vision. And that’s my tentative theme for 2027 at Flinders. Find where my vision intersects with the needs of the collective. Whilst I have used BetterU as the dominant example in this post, it should be noted a similar process is taking place with the PHF at the moment as well.
If you’ve read this far, thank you. I’ll leave you with some questions. If you were to think of your own work life as having phases/themes, how are you going about integrating them in your current work? How do you make your work, going forward, appropriately honour the lessons you’ve learned along the way?
On a more practical note, if you work in a similar space (wellbeing) in higher education in Australia, consider getting in touch. I’d be interested to hear what you’re working on and how you’re approaching these questions.
