Lifestyle

Being loved in a loveless environment

Ava Doherty reflects on university friendships – and laments how it can often feel like a loveless environment

A homely solution to stress

Sometimes the strangest methods are the most effective.

Ssh…here’s the debrief on gossip.

Gossip – does it have redeemable qualities, or is it simply inexcusable? Amy Lawson discusses.

Zero social anxiety?

Tiktok is helping us see what it might be like to have no social anxiety. But is complete disinhibition something we should all aspire to?

Cherpse! Daniel and Lindsay

Daniel, English, University, 2nd Year First impressions: Extremely awkward, for some reason we ended up messaging for ages with the audio on but cameras off, very...

Do It For the Gram: Dalgona Heartbreak

I’ve grammed my food exactly once in my nineteen years. In my defence, it was Thanksgiving, the food is really only in the lower...

In Defence of a Goddess: why I love Nigella

In the comedy Miranda, Penny, Miranda’s preposterous mother, laments that her daughter ‘hasn’t been blessed by the goddess of socialising.’ ‘There isn’t a goddess of socialising’,...

Nora Ephron, and Why You Should Never Regret the Potatoes

"I have made a lot of mistakes falling in love, and regretted most of them," says Nora Ephron in her thinly-veiled autobiographical novel, Heartburn,...

Oxford’s bike black markets and other vicious cycles

When you find yourself locked in a stranger’s car, alone, behind an MOT station 30 miles away from college, half an hour until your...

A man’s best friend

As a child, I developed a strange habit: whenever I wanted anything, I would make a PowerPoint. My younger self had a compulsion to...

Going for a run – a reality check

‘Running’, says American long-distance champion Kara Goucher, ‘allows me to set my mind free. Nothing seems impossible, nothing unattainable.’ Now, I’m not sure how she feels...

No more “Viva la Revolution”: Has our generation become boring?

Throughout history, students have been feared as the archenemy of social and political order: from Paris to Cairo, we’ve revolutionised cultural norms, broken laws,...

Lockdown dating: a guide

Your ex is messaging you, that one-night stand from Bridge is in your Insta DMs and you are struggling not to write an Oxlove...

A Perspective on Validation

The inability to feel validated is something many of us struggle with. We routinely identify certain parts of our lives that we are not...

Why food festivals matter

Every year on Shrove Tuesday, I put aside the time to make my family pancakes - despite the fact that my parents would much prefer...

Love, actually: dating in 2020

I can’t lie, when I heard the news that we’d probably all be holed up in our rooms for the next few months, without...

Cherpse! Trudy and Will

Will, St. Hilda’s, Physics 1st year First impressions?  Her fashionably late entrance left me worrying I had been stood up on a Zoom date - that would...

Letting loose: our relationship to “natural hair”

It’s been about three months since the start of what we now know to be a worldwide shutdown. Like many other students, I’ve been...

Tradition and transformations: reconnecting through food

What is your Christmas smell? Mine is cinnamon. At that time of year, it seems to spill off the table and into every bowl and dried...

Oxford, Reviewed

The Radcliffe Camera The pièce de résistance, the joire de vivre, the petit filous, the jewel in Oxford’s mighty, mighty crown. You’ve posted the shit...

You are not alone – What getting run over by a bus taught me about myself and Oxford

It’s been an odd year for everyone. Few could have predicted that Hilary would end in such a dramatic fashion, and certainly not myself,...

Now do I belong?: The effects of early-onset impostor syndrome

As Hilary Term drew to a close and we sat in my friend’s room, anticipating a final night out, we reflected on how we’d...

Human nature: why we should all be getting outdoors

At the moment, I feel more grateful than ever to live where I do. My house backs on to fields meaning whichever direction I...

Isolation Hustles – How lockdown has affected student mini-businesses

The coronavirus crisis has stopped the global economy in its tracks. Each week, yet more gloomy headlines appear: this week, a BBC headline proclaimed...