As a PhD student, Waki Kamino shares how her journey of learning and exploring new frontiers fills her with a profound sense of ikigai
Feeling ikigai through learning
Nick: With that, what about you? What is your ikigai or what are some of your ikigai sources?
Waki: I love learning new things. It's a typical boring PhD student. I think I love diving into the unknown, it kind of gives me a rash of, you know, adrenaline as well. Kind of similar to when I'm watching sports, I guess. I think, learning new things. So typical student answer.
Nick: I love the way you framed it, diving into the unknown, so I might steal that from you. That's a beautiful way to…
Waki: It probably started from someone else, anyway.
Nick: Awesome. Well, I definitely dived into the unknown with your paper. And I learned a lot. And I can't believe how thorough it is and how much time it must have taken you.
Waki: All the credit goes to the people who generously share their lived knowledge to weird students from the US?
Nick: Well, that's the beauty of the academia, the academic world. And I've been amazed at how willing they are to share, especially to me, someone who's basically no academic background.
Waki: Are you kidding? Like, no one reads our paper and and when someone says, I read your paper, can you talk about it? Of, course, we were like, ‘We want to talk about it!’
Nick: Well, with that, let's read the title of the paper again, so it's: ‘Making Meaning Together: Co-designing a Social Robot for Older Adults with Ikigai Experts.’ I will link to the paper from the show notes.