Ciara Rushton

Food security has long been one of the most pertinent issues arising from the climate crisis. With the global environment changing immensely and countries...

This week Ciara introduces the St John's kittens... One of the real joys of the vacation is getting to go home and spend time with...

My parents used to tell me that, back in the 1970s when they were growing up, everyone had a pet tortoise. Coming to Oxford,...

I have always had a soft spot for cats, having three of my own at home. It might not, therefore, come as much of...

Few of Oxford’s college pets are as iconic as Hertford’s college cat, Simpkin. When I first visited Oxford before applying, back in the lockdown...

In what is often a stressful academic environment, nothing offers greater stress relief than cute animals. College pets are therefore, in my opinion, one...

"The most important thing is that Oxford is a fantastic environment in which to express yourself, your sexuality, and your gender identity freely."

Contamination OCD is commonly understood as a form of OCD wherein the obsessions and compulsions experienced by an individual orientate around catching and spreading...

CW: anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, or OCD, can be characterised by a heavy reliance on routine. Individuals such as myself that...

"This self-sabotage is something that’s really intensified, along with a lot of my other OCD symptoms, since coming to university. I could stare for hours at a blank screen out of pure worry that what I’m writing wouldn’t be a masterpiece. This is the point at which the compulsions kick in - tapping on my head five times for good luck is my most common one. Any mix-up in how I do it and I’ve got bad luck for the rest of the day."

Since my diagnosis, I’ve learned a lot about myself and about OCD. It’s not been a matter of learning to live with it, but rather understanding how it is a part of myself and how I can harness it for good.