Saturday, April 26, 2025
Blog Page 595

Lady Pat R. Honising: Fretting Fresher

Lady Pat R. Honising
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Lady Pat R. Honising: Fretting Fresher

Dear Agony Aunt,
I wondered if you could give me some of your hard-earned advice. I have finally had the slap in the face realisation that my Prelims are coming up at the end of the term, and to tell you the truth, it’s not ideal. I’ve spent the majority of my first year social climbing and telling myself that it’s only first year once, however have realised that not only is this not conducive to a low 2.i and a job in the city, but the last part may not even be true, as it’s looking more and more likely that I’ll end up retaking first year. Please Agony Aunt, tell me how I can go from a full time networking fiend to passing prelims in just eight weeks?
Fretting Fresher

Dear Anon,

Oh my sweet child, fear not, you have come to the right place. We’ve all been there, finding ourselves going back to Oxford at the end of a 6+ week vac with nothing to show for ourselves aside from a weakened alcohol tolerance and desperation. But if Grace Fit and myself have anything in common, it’s that we both somehow scraped ourselves through this and made it to second year (give or take the scholar’s gown, a million Instagram followers and a house in London), which just goes to show that you too can get through these turbulent times. For just eight easy payments of a tiny fragment of your sanity per week, you too will be saying hello to second year, without sacrificing your networking prowess!

Your first step to success is simple – assessing your priorities. Sure, opening the website on that fateful day in the Summer vac and seeing that ambiguous 2.i will give you a fleeting moment of joy; maybe even enough to send that instantly regrettable gloat to the group chat that really does nothing but make you look like a bit of a dickhead. But what comes next? This isn’t A-Level results day – day drinking until it’s time to go to your nearest ATIK/PRYZM variant to meet Love Island’s latest reject is not on the cards tonight. All that remains is the celebratory Instagram story you nearly posted, which will just so happen to be the last time your Prelims score is mentioned. What you really need to focus on here is the long game.

It’s about time we took a little inspiration from two of the greatest philosophical minds of the last few hundred years
– Jeremy Bentham and Marie Kondo. Forget about prelims for the moment and focus on what really sparks the maximal amount of joy for the maximal number. You’re a self-described social climber, seeking that sweet, sweet empty gratification that can only be provided by a soul sucking spring week that you couldn’t be less genuinely interested in. What could serve your (lack of) interests better than pursuing this as your Trinity Term goal! £9250 a year for world class education and the opportunity to make genuine friends for life vs the priceless fun of getting caught up in a corporate hellhole at the ripe old age of nineteen – there’s no comparison! Keep networking, whether your platform of choice is Linkedin, Tinder or the Bridge VIP room, and you’ll be on track for this fun and exciting future in no time – prelims will soon be only a distant memory!

All social commentary aside, you will be absolutely fine my dear anon. Disregard what people may tell you about Prelims being the be all and end all, as this is just not true. If you are anything like me, a little bit of sparknotes and desperation will carry you through just fine to get that low 2.i whilst not having to sacrifice anything else, whether that be the networking you thrive upon, or like me, a Bridge or two here and a Plush or three there. Listen to your Auntie and don’t take it too seriously, and you’ll be just fine and on track for a cracking second year and beyond.

Toodle pip and lots of snugs,
Lady P xoxoxo

Cherpse! Felix and Kaitlyn

Cherwell Life
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Cherpse! Felix and Kaitlyn

Felix Westcott, 1st Year, Medicine, St Peter’s

Kaitlyn was super nice and I really enjoyed taking the time out from revising to talk to get to know someone new and talk and learn about her time at university in America and ideas about education in general. Because of the fact that she’s a visiting student from America there lots of talk about different university systems and like the party atmosphere in the two countries, like a cool bit about greek life there and Oxford union here. Overall it was really nice to meet her and interesting to talk to but would only see her as a friend.

What was your first impression?

Seemed really nice, very friendly in that American way. Good looking.

Quality of the chat out of ten?

7.5

Most awkward moment?

Waiting in line to get drinks right after we first met but before we sat down and started chatting properly.

Kiss or miss?

Miss because I feel like we got on really well as friends.

Kaitlyn Ham, visiting student, PPE, Pembroke

Overall we had a great time, Felix kind of reminded me of when I was an excited college freshman, and we ended up chatting about how he felt being away from home for the first time – although I did worry that he was a little young for me to be going on a date with. He was really nice though and I enjoyed comparing what it was like to go to school here and in the US, as well as talking about medicine and all sorts of other things. Overall I had a lovely time.

What was your first impression?

Tall.

Quality of the chat out of ten?

8

Most awkward moment?

Nothing that bad. Maybe first meeting up and leaving?

Kiss or miss?

Very nice, but maybe a little young for me so probably a miss.

Looking for love?

Email [email protected] or message one of our Life Editors Eve Webster or Simone Fraser!

To the Barricades! – via Waitrose

Aine Kennedy
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To the Barricades! – via Waitrose

“It’s not free, love.”

I looked up from my third slice of sunwarmed, spongy Hovis, and into the narrowed eyes of a middle-aged white woman with dreadlocks. “Sorry?”

She nodded pointedly at my plate, streaked with evidence of my crime. “The hummus. It’s not free.”

“Oh. I‒ uh… sorry.”

The woman gazed sourly down at me for a moment, her wooden Venus symbol earrings swaying gently in the April breeze. The 5-piece brass band and line of policemen behind us seemed to melt away, and suddenly I was in Year 4 again, being apprehended by a lunch lady mid-theft of my fifth serving of Arctic roll. The air between us was thick with tension, as well as a pungent blend of patchouli oil and BO wafting sepulchrally from the meditation circle a few feet distant.

A scuffle behind the daal stand caught my accuser’s attention, and with a parting glare she strode off to investigate. This would not be the last time I was admonished about the ‘donation hummus’, but it was, fortunately, the closest I came to an actual confrontation during my time with the Extinction Rebellion.

I say “with”. Like many who participated in the demonstrations, I was motivated partly by conscience, and partly by a desire to get a picture of the big pink boat plonked in the middle of Oxford Circus. But many more were motivated by something else. XR protestors have been variously criticised as selfish, egotistical, and out of touch, but as the number of people arrested passed the 1,000 mark on Monday, it became clear that the movement is driven by a large core of people who are genuinely, urgently concerned with the state of our environment. The variety and persistence of the people who turned out at various locations over the week of ‘occupations’ proved that the public is aware of climate issues and striving to address them. Heartening as this attitude is, whether it will result in actual change is another question. And whether they’re the majority is yet another.

When I reached Waterloo Bridge on April 20th, the protest was in its sixth day, and still buzzing despite the alternative diversions on offer in Hyde Park. The cloudless skies and 20-degree heat (thanks, climate change?) added to the festival atmosphere: warm cans of Red Stripe, the faint scent of frying onions, thin, blonde, septum-pierced girls napping in the shade with French braids pillowed atop their Herschels… Wait. Did she go to my primary school? Let’s not stick around to find out.

I whipped around to survey the rest of the packed bridge, best described as a street party with patches of “I’m missing Boomtown this year because mummy wants us to go to the villa in Skiathos”. Not a philosophy David Attenborough, patron saint of ecology, would approve of I’m sure. At the north end, a large banner and a cluster of sweaty, pained-looking police officers were collectively glistening in the afternoon sun, soundtracked by the irregular scrape of wheels against wood as a preteen boy swung up and down a small skate ramp. A white-stubbled man proffered stickers and leaflets to passersby, unfazed by the drum and bass thudding from a speaker behind him. Several times I stumbled into the path of a woman in her sixties doing tai chi, moving gently around the bridge with the unhurried, random trajectory of the DVD logo bouncing around a noughties computer screen.

My pleasure at seeing the older generation participating so actively was dampened by the realisation that a lot of these people were actually just middle aged, white, and sun-damaged. (I tried to make a joke to my friend about Caucasians’ lack of rhythm as we passed the drum circle, but had to begrudgingly admit that they were pretty good). The concentration of tribal tattoos, bare feet, and crusty dreads increased as I pressed into the centre, where a thick cloud of incense was doing its best to disguise the smell of dozens of shirtless, hairy men. There were a handful of black and southeast Asian faces, but the majority were tanned at best and sunburnt at worst. Meanwhile, the only other East Asian person I saw was my mum, anxiously stalking me from the other side of the bridge to ensure I didn’t get arrested. (This in itself may help explain why there weren’t more Asians present).

The Extinction Rebellion protests weren’t a totally white affair, especially since there were a range of sites with varying atmospheres. The protest zone designated by police at Marble Arch and addressed by Greta Thunberg was more formal ‒ crucially, it didn’t pose the risk of arrest for attendees, as at Waterloo Bridge and Oxford Circus. And the drama of civil disobedience, from ‘die-ins’ to gluing one’s peachy cheeks to the House of Commons, has been vital in energising less hardline members of the public to join the movement. But the occupations were fun. Not necessarily for the people who got arrested, but for the many who, like me, came down, enjoyed the atmosphere, and rinsed the snack bar. It’s easy to put on some glitter, paint a sign, and spend the day listening to psytrance and blaming Big Oil for wrecking the ice caps. It’s also easy to forget that Big Oil does this to enable individual lifestyle choices that we may not even be aware of making as I’m sure many of my fellow protestors are indeed in willful ignorance of, just like the rest of us.

The single-use plastic hummus tubs were a necessary sacrifice to fuel White Guy With Cornrows No. 7 and his slam-poetry ode to Gaia (“let’s plant a new seed to breed a generation who can breathe in harmony with the sea”). The nonbiodegradable glitter on the face of the Camberwell students discussing how “it’s a size too small but I only bought it to get into Berghain” was, surely, equally necessary. There was a woman with a plasticboxed Waitrose superfood salad strapped to her Kanken backpack like a protective talisman. I wish I was making this up.

One of the activists that day acknowledged these issues, but voiced frustration at focus on XR’s perceived flaws being used to detract from its mission. “This movement is about everyone’s lives, all over the world, regardless of class or gender. Of course the organisation as a whole will have its flaws, nothing’s perfect, but to try to write off the whole thing as ‘middle class’. The whole point is it’s bigger than everyone involved”. And I suppose this is a bit more forgiving than my cynicism.

Even if a lot of it is for that ever self-indulgent gram, Extinction Rebellion’s protests have reengaged us with the climate emergency and allowed the British public to make its feelings clear to politicians. Now, it’s time for the more be-glittered, M&S shopping, casual environmentalists to examine what they can do themselves to address the situation. The thousand people prepared to get arrested are already doing so- for the many thousands of others who participated and went back to business as usual, the protests should serve as a reminder of our individual responsibilities, not just on the picket line but also while on Depop, at Starbucks or even in the Waitrose hummus aisle.

The Duality of Movement in the New Taiwanese Cinema Movement

Ellie Czyzowska
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The Duality of Movement in the New Taiwanese Cinema Movement

The entry of Hong Kong cinema to the Taiwanese market in the 1980s brought with it a move to protect homegrown directors and maintain a national art scene. From this desire came the 1982 feature In Our Time, directed by Te-Chen Tao, I-Chien Ko, Yi Chang, and Edward Yang, this film seen as the ‘beginning’ of the New Taiwanese Cinema Movement. Involved in this first feature, director Edward Yang would go on to produce a number of acclaimed films over the next 20 years, but it is his 1991 release, A Brighter Summer Day, which is now seen as the defining work for the entire movement. In terms of ‘movement’, there are two approaches to take for the film: its place in the New Taiwanese Cinema Movement, and through its depiction of the movement of Western culture over Taiwanese tradition.

Set in 1960s Taiwan, the film follows Xiao Si’r, a young boy from a large Chinese family, whose settlement in Taiwan is part of the wider political period, seeing escape from the Communism of mainland China. The displacement immediately introduces one of the key themes of the movement as a whole: realistic portrayals of common problems in Taiwanese society, including in particular conflicts with political authority. Films of this movement were known for their slow pace, following genuine people using camera techniques which promoted a sense of realism, this shown especially in the distant camera angels often used to show a sense of time passing for the protagonist, Si’r.

Focusing on a single family, you feel by the end of the 240 minutes as though you are another seat at their table – the extended run-time is not taken for granted, every scene still feels necessary, tailored for this film, as though before the editing process the film had been twice the length, and what remains is irreplaceable to the narrative. It defines the movement through extended scenes of silence, using a steady camera which remains in one spot even when you feel you are ready for it to move on, but goes even further than its contemporaries in its pacing. The peacefulness typically associated with such stillness is distorted, somehow, images such as the early shot of Si’r and Ming’s shoes as they lean against a school wall kept from total, utter tranquillity by the time-frame placed on them, the pair only stopping to linger that a teacher may pass them by.

Asides from defining a cinematic movement, A Brighter Summer Day focuses on movement in a thematic sense, following the ‘move’, or, infiltration, of Western culture in the 1960s to traditional Taiwanese society.

This is depicted specifically through the presence of Elvis Presley, both in conversation, and in song, throughout. The title of the film is taken from Presley’s ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight’, bringing the promise of hope for ‘a brighter summer day’, whilst simultaneously rendering such hope useless by reminding of the loneliness which comes with wishing somebody was missing you back. So effective is this use of ‘Lonesome’ that every time I think of the song, Presley being a central figure in my music for close to a decade, I now think of Si’r and his navigation through life, the song thus irreversibly changed and redefined for me.

Even after he has committed murder, the audience hopes for Si’rs salvation despite knowing that it is hopeless, largely thanks to the homicide being portrayed with great subtlety, the movements filled with love thanks to the camera location being a distant angle from across the street. This idealistic mix of hopefulness and hopelessness at the same moment, at least to me, the goal of such a socially-conscious film, and such a socially-conscious film movement as a whole.

Thinking Through The Flesh

Grace Tomlinson
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Thinking Through The Flesh

I had high hopes for Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir, The Chronology of Water, only recently released in the UK, mostly because it begins with this:

The day my daughter was still-born, after I held the future pink and rose-lipped in my shivering arms, lifeless tender, covering her face in tears and kisses, after they handed my dead girl to my sister who kissed her, then to my first husband who kissed her, then to my mother who could not bear to hold her, then out of the hospital room door, tiny lifeless swaddled thing, the nurse gave me tranquilizers and a soap and sponge.

The force of this paragraph continues throughout the memoir, along with its painful beauty. Yuknavitch carries you on a dizzying tour through a childhood under an abusive father and an alcoholic, suicidal mother, a college swimming career punctuated by addiction and self-destruction, a writing career that sets her on the path towards healing. Her style is overtly experimental, with the narrative eddying around her most significant memories. It is, at times, confusing, with events alluded to but never properly explained, people named that we haven’t yet met. It will not be to everyone’s taste; the prose is at its best only when you surrender to it. The narrative is disparate and circular, rather like memory itself – something that seems deliberate. 

The Chronology of Wateris aware of itself; it is a coherent narrative imposed over events that don’t have one. Yuknavitch often draws attention to her writing as an act of embellishment, blurring the line between truth and invention. She writes of her students, asking if the things in her short stories ‘really happened’ to her. After a short deliberation, there is no answer; “when we bring language to the body, isn’t it always already an act of fiction?” And yet, the body is the “only witness” we can call to the stand, the truth of the body the only truth Yuknavitch is able to give us. 

Paradoxically, Yuknavitch’s memoir always feels honest, sometimes uncomfortably so. Yuknavitch seems so truthful because she allows her “only witness” to speak for her. There can be no unfounded half-truths because the evidence of Yuknavitch’s life is in her body, in her sweat, tears, orgasms, births, injuries, and addictions. Her body stands as a metaphor, for the act of creation and of writing, for her sexual and intellectual self, and as a physical manifestation of her identity as a swimmer, a mother, a woman, an addict. It is only when she moves away from this firm root in the bodily truth of her story that Yuknavitch’s writing becomes weak. The reader doesn’t need her connection with art and writing spelled out to them, as her body, and by extension her body of work, are a testament to that very fact. Yuknavitch is strongest when she thinks and writes through her body. Without the sense of physicality that runs through her work, her writing is airy and anchorless, verging on pretentious. The passage where she instructs the woman reader to collect rocks, although much shared in certain corners of Twitter, seems to revel in its own mysticism. It comes too early in the work for anyone to be convinced of Yuknavitch’s authority on the female experience. When she moves on to her own experience collecting rocks to cope with the grief of the still-birth of her first child, the prose becomes, once again, something concrete and moving.

And yet, even the insubstantial, not-quite-convincing passages of The Chronology of Water wrap you up and carry you with them. I read the whole thing in one frenzied sitting, and couldn’t stop myself from returning to it the next day, re-reading whole chapters. There are no attempts at politeness, no allowances made for the squeamish. Yuknavitch tells us, this is what it is to live as I have done. Overwhelmingly, The Chronology of Water is about healing, messily and humanly, through art, through literature, through connection. However far away your life feels from Yuknavitch’s, reading her work feels like being truly seen.

The Consolation of ‘Constellations’

Erin Minogue
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The Consolation of ‘Constellations’

In Constellations: Reflections on a Life, Sinéad Gleeson navigates her own relationship with and the intersections between illness, the body and motherhood, in a series of essays that combine the personal anecdotal style of memoir with cultural criticism. From the pain she experiences as a teenager, which is eventually diagnosed as monoarticular arthritis, to pregnancies and a diagnosis of aggressive leukaemia, Constellations charts the intimate relationship Gleeson has with her own body. But Gleeson moves outwards from her own experience to explore far-ranging topics, from the political implications of hair to the history of blood transfusions and the narratives of adventure stories. 

Gleeson’s concern with the way that illness and the body shape the narrative of our lives is manifested throughout the book in her interest in the relationship between life and storytelling. Upon telling her mother that she had been diagnosed with leukaemia, Gleeson recalls that she said: “I’m not going to die, I’m going to write a book.” The act of writing becomes, for Gleeson, a tangible evidence of living. The hybrid essay-memoir form allows her to contain a representation of life and illness. In one essay, Gleeson quotes Virginia Woolf’s ‘On Being Ill’ in which Woolf remarks on the “poverty of language” that occurs in the depths of illness. Vocalising pain and attempting to advocate for ourselves to doctors requires from us language that we might not be able to produce. Another barrier to understanding is that we are sometimes not listened to; we fight to find the words to use, only to be disbelieved by the medical professionals we rely on. In Constellations, Gleeson draws from her own experience of illness and pain to exhibit the insufficiency of language in articulating suffering. At one point, Gleeson creates poems from the language of the McGill pain index, a scale used by doctors to assess pain, in an attempt to provide a fuller vocabulary for suffering. These poems act as an articulation of various moments of intense pain for Gleeson, from ‘Heartburn (in pregnancy)’ to ‘Unlistened-to Pain’, and also point towards the limitations of finding words to convey the exact shape of pain meaningfully. 

In an essay entitled ‘A Wound Gives Off Its Own Light’ (named after a line in an Anne Carson poem), Gleeson turns to depictions of life and illness in art, charting her own relationship with the works of three female artists: Frida Kahlo, Jo Spence and Lucy Grealy. From each of these women, all of whom have made illness their subject, using art as a means of representing a diagnosis, Gleeson reflects on the lessons they taught her, namely that “it was possible to live a parallel creative life, one that overshadows the patient life, nudging it off centre stage… That in taking all the pieces of the self, fractured by surgery, there is rearrangement: making wounds the source of inspiration, not the end of it.” The expression of illness and life in art becomes then a collaborative process, one that Gleeson participates in. 

The flexibility of the essay form allows Gleeson space to track the intricacies of illness, of the forcible transgressions between the personal and political spheres that illness demands. As an Irish woman writing about the body, Gleeson makes explicit the politicisation of the female body in Ireland. “Until 2018,” she writes, “it was impossible to talk about the body in Ireland and not discuss abortion,” in the opening of the essay ‘Twelve Stories of Bodily Autonomy (for the twelve women a day who leave)’. Writing on the referendum to repeal the 8th amendment of the Irish constitution, Gleeson draws together stories of the women who fought and died for reproductive rights in Ireland, alongside her own experience of canvassing for the ‘Yes’ campaign and going to the polling station with her daughter. Out of a painful, and deeply divisive struggle, Gleeson weaves a tale of hope and optimism – a story in which “things are changing. The crowd has swelled; the voices are louder.” 

Constellations is pulled together by a reverence for language and storytelling. From the interweaving of a wide range of subject matters, what I was left with at the end of the book was profound faith in the transformative power of writing to lead us through pain.

Mooncups are the future

Amelia Horn
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Mooncups are the future

Last month, the Newcastle University Student Union proposed the provision of free tampons for their students. This would make the university the first in England to provide free sanitary products.

It appears part of a wider societal movement – from this summer, for example, NHS England will be providing female patients with free tampons.

The move is an admirable one both in terms of reducing the financial impact on menstruation and at increasing awareness of something still seen as an uncomfortable topic by many. But it approaches only one element of the huge problem generated by the widespread use of tampons; their contribution to the destruction of our planet.

In condemning the endeavour, I am not denying the struggle faced by women with respect to purchasing sanitary products. Period poverty is real. Just three weeks ago, BBC News reported that girls in Wales were using socks and kitchen paper instead of pads to reduce costs. In a study compiled by The Huffington Post UK, it was estimated that women spend as much as £18,450 on periods in their lifetime.

Something must be done, yet the institutional support of tampon use through their free provision is not the answer. In fact, this may even produce a negative effect; if students are given access to free disposable sanitary products, their incentive to try more environmentally friendly options will be diminished.

The facts are these: depending on the data source, women use between 10,000 and 20,000 tampons in their lifetime. The same Huffington Post article reported that in 2015 only 6% of British women used menstrual cups.

Yet, I am firmly convinced that these cups are one of the most revolutionary inventions in our fight against global warming. And this is why – rather than providing free single-use sanitary products – schools, universities, NGOs, and governments should be handing out a menstrual cup to every woman and girl under their administration.

Currently, buying a Mooncup, one of the leading brands in the UK, costs £21.99. For a student, a pretty intimidating up-front cost (although the same amount might easily be spent in Park End on a Wednesday night). But the idea of paying this much for such an unknown and unfamiliar contraption is understandably scary.

I myself felt the same. The idea of using a weird silicone egg-with-stalk-shaped cup to catch menstrual blood, and then washing it out and reinserting seemed terrifying. It produces visions of monthly discomfort, discolouring, and disgusting bathroom experiences. I only decided to take the plunge because I am lucky enough that my college’s welfare team offers reimbursement for Mooncups. I could try it, hate it, never use it again, and I wouldn’t have spent a penny.

I did not expect that it would become one of the best lifestyle changes I have ever made. And because I’ve heard that stories work better than statistics, I am going to publicly share my experience in the name of environmentalism.

Firstly, it is easy to insert and remove: no mess, no pain, no faffing around. Each one comes with easy to follow instructions and troubleshooting, plus a little bag for storage.

They are really comfortable, and you no longer have to worry about having enough tampons or pads for the day. No more rationing of your last remaining few; no more stealing them from your mum when you get back for the holiday!

Menstrual cups can hold up to three times more than your average tampon – something I’m sure lots of us would have found helpful on our Bronze Duke of Edinburgh expedition! You can also empty them whenever, unlike tampons, where it feels a waste to take them out until you absolutely need to.

These kinds of things are the smaller but still crucial effects of period poverty – the monthly stress experienced by all girls, trying to manage their period while using as few products as possible so they don’t have to buy more. Another of the many reasons why institutions such as the Newcastle Student Union should be proposing free menstrual cups and not disposable sanitary products. The latter will only make women and girls more liberal with their use of tampons and pads, rather than reducing both the financial burden of menstruation but also the waste produced.

I have bigger dreams for the menstrual cup than free provision for university students, though. Imagine the impact, both in terms of female agency and mobility, but also in an environmental capacity, if menstrual cups were provided in deprived areas across the United Kingdom but also throughout the developing world. Not only would this enable women to vastly reduce the money and stress that comes with disposable sanitary products, but we would achieve – on a global level – a vast reduction in waste.

This is the mission of the charity The Cup Effect. Women in the world’s poorest communities are less able to participate in society due to lack of access to and/or funds for sanitary products. For school-age girls in these areas, they may miss up to 20% of their time in school because they cannot manage their period on such limited resources.

Raising awareness about the menstrual cup as a sustainable alternative that bestows upon women in developing areas an autonomy previously unavailable.

We should all be welcoming the idea of menstrual cups as an international female movement that is both sustainable and empowering. Tackling period poverty is necessary. However, the direction we are moving in to solve it is merely a quick fix which will have devastating long-term repercussions.

As such, while Newcastle University’s intention is good, they are looking at period poverty solely from a feminist angle. But modern-day ‘feminism’ should include looking at green solutions to issues of gender inequality, and such a limited approach puts our beautiful planet at an even greater risk.

So, join me in calling for world organisations to support the provision of sustainable sanitary products for a long-term resolution to period poverty. At the very least, buy a Mooncup, and tell your friends – make my decision to share my menstruation habits worth it!

Emails, you’re breaking my heart

Thomas Laver
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Emails, you’re breaking my heart

For too long our email inboxes have treated us poorly, and it must end now.

If they’re on again off again, if they abandon you during the holidays and then bother you endlessly during term time and if they leave you stressed, sad, and ultimately broken – they’re not your romantic partner, they’re your Outlook inbox.

Throughout term, they deluge us with information: tutorial work, society newsletters, library fines, all when we’re too stressed and overrun to deal with the flood of communications.

Much like Sisyphus, the task of email maintenance is unrelenting and punishment beyond all imagining.

Yet when it comes to the vac – a time when we’re generally at a loose end looking for something to do or read – they desert us.

Which of us has not felt the cold sense of abandonment upon checking their normally bursting inbox during the vacation to find that nothing has been received in over a week? Just when we need them most to give us some direction or activity in the vast stretches of emptiness between the ever over-burdened 8 weeks, the emails dry up. With the remaining names, subject lines, and icons etching themselves repeatedly into our irises.

We are left barren.

Bereft.

Lonely.

It’s the hoping that kills you.

Each log-on a hope for attention cruelly crushed… if it were merely an issue of finding alternative occupation during the holidays, then perhaps I could forgive my inbox for having some time off, but as we all know, inboxes have a further unacceptable vice we have for too long accepted. They’re just so damn needy. When they’re not mind-numbingly empty, they swing to the opposite end of the spectrum during term, constantly pinging notifications at you.

Just when you’re two hours off an essay deadline and desperately trying to write a conclusion, your email inbox will decide to start buzzing every two seconds, throwing out those obstructive visual prompts and annoying bell sounds to get your attention. And should you decide to – as a perfectly normal person would – temporarily mute this panoply of irritation, you’ll discover upon your return a notification in bold: “57 unread items”. It’s absolutely torturous.

What an obvious trick by our emails to get us to spend more time with them, forcing us to read each piece of digital detritus to end the glaring warnings. DO NOT be fooled by such duplicity: email inboxes are attention whores who will keep demanding your attention, however much you try to soothe them. It’s time to end this toxic relationship: email inboxes are simply capricious on again-off-again lovers who will always treat us poorly.

We’re as mad as hell and we’re not gonna take it for one second more. It’s time to rise up and say no!

Maybe this breakup can be the catalyst to make them change their ways and learn how to treat us well, but I’m not holding out hope.

If anyone needs to send me a message please call, text, send a messenger boy, or a carrier pigeon, but for the love of God not an email.

BREAKING: Climate activist glues himself to Darwin statue in Natural History Museum

Ben van der Merwe
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BREAKING: Climate activist glues himself to Darwin statue in Natural History Museum

An activist associated with Extinction Rebellion has glued himself to a statue of Charles Darwin in the Natural History Museum.

The protester, who is yet to be identified, gave a speech about climate change to the large crowd that gathered around him.

An Extinction Rebellion Oxford spokesperson told Cherwell: “A group of Oxford XR members had planned to stage a protest at the Natural History Museum today, but postponed it in order to join in with our outreach work today across Oxford.”

The group denied direct involvement with the protest, telling Cherwell: “The individual inside the Natural History Museum today acted on his own and we didn’t know about the action until after it had happened.

“XR is a decentralised movement, so anyone is entitled to take action following our principles”

The activist was allegedly able to recite a poem for the onlookers before being removed from the statue by security guards, and detained by police outside the museum.

Photo: Ross Moncrieff

Speaking to Cherwell, eyewitness Ross Moncrieff said: “I was in the Pitt Rivers museum with my friends when we heard shouting coming from the main hall.

“We went to see what was going on and we saw that a man had covered himself in fake blood and was shouting at the top of his lungs.

“There was quite a large crowd around him and he said that he had glued himself to the statue of Darwin he was next to. He first gave a short speech about the dangers of climate change, saying that he was protesting in the Natural History Museum because he thought climate change posed a real threat to both culture and the natural world.

“He then read a poem which he seemed to have written himself about the “apocalypse”. When he finished the security guards at the museum removed him and he was arrested outside by the police.”

Photo: Ross Moncrieff

Extinction Rebellion, Thames Valley Police and the Oxford Museum of Natural History have been contacted for comment.

The Rise and Fall of Artistic Movements

Emma Ball
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The Rise and Fall of Artistic Movements

The mutability of movements is an inevitability. It’s the constantly self-renewing process within art that ensures it can continue to fulfil its purpose of appealing to an audience. As people and societies change, art must change with them. To remain static and without innovation is to go against the basic principles of art as we view them today.

Whilst in the medieval era our strong conservative outlook tended to lead to stability and consistency within artistic trends, by the late Renaissance artists defined their worth within their profession by their difference and unique flair. The decline of the classical Renaissance style led to the rise of Mannerism, where the perfect proportions that we have all seen in Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man were thrown out of the window in favour of painting a Madonna with an outrageously long neck. To be different meant that you stood apart from the crowd. When the height of perfection had already been perceived to have been reached, there was little option but to break new ground if an artist was to make their own mark. Entire movements can therefore be born out of the desire for renown.

The Cubist movement, for example, prioritised different visual clues that all act in conflict with each other in order to prevent the formation of a coherent image of reality. It was therefore not just an experiment in a new style of art but a different way of seeing and approaching the world. In a world of confusion and change in the immediate run-up to the First World War the Cubists sought to encourage individuals to find their own patterns and meanings in what they saw before them, and to not take everything at face value.

Yet it should not be believed that artistic movements arise only as a passive response to their surroundings; many have been a vehicle of the desires of individuals for change to occur. The Italian Futurist Movement of the early twentieth century actively sought to change the mentality of their society, as they believed that it was outdated. By emphasising the power and thrill of modern technology, they aimed to change people’s outlook on life in a radical way, from reminiscing about the past to pushing for the new and improved. In the Renaissance, art looked to the ancients for guidance and as a standard to be reached. Now, the Futurists were pushing us to look at modern humanity and how it has the power to change. An artistic voice alone could cause ripples, but when combined with many others in a movement it has the power to send shockwaves. The Realist movement of the mid-nineteenth century grew from this desire of the artists to voice their political opinions through the medium of painting, if they were not able to do it in reality.

But the political power of such movements is not always well received by broader society. Backlash can be triggered which threatens the breadth of the audience that artists can appeal to. When artists aren’t given access to an audience, their very ability to survive as part of a coherent movement is called into question. The Realist work of Manet on pieces such as the Execution of the Emperor Maximilian allows the horror of the event to speak for itself and passes no moral judgement on the actions which are unfolding. Yet the work was still censored by the police. The identity of a movement can therefore continuously evolve. From a simple objective statement to an act of rebellion, the reaction to movements can define them almost as much as the works within them.

Artistic movements therefore possess the power to develop in order to appeal to a basic belief or concept of a society and can become a symbol and a rallying point around which identities and aims can be formed. The artistic movement in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, which focused on the depiction of landscapes, often in a way analogous to historical or biblical events, helped in creating one of the things which humanity longs for the most: a sense of home and a sense of belonging. References to ancient Israel and the ‘chosen people’ celebrated the Dutch landscape and the courage of its people, leading to a sense of pride in the heritage and identity of their people. In response to threat and fear of persecution, an artistic movement arose to alleviate fears and to strengthen a community into a nation. In this way, movements have responded to their context and have aimed to resolve an issue in a way that only art can.

Artistic movements therefore rise, they evolve, and they fall. Their lifecycle is not only a passive reflection of the context in which they are present but can be viewed as a conscious and active response to aspects of society. Even if the coherence of a movement fails and it shatters, the legacy which it has left on our outlook and perceptions remains and will continue to shape future artistic development


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