Dearest Superficial People, I find it really strange that you notice superficial things about people. No actually, I find it really strange that you notice superficial things about people and insist on pointing them out. It annoys me most that you behave as if your level of superficiality ought to be shared by everyone around…
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Dear dog owners, lovers and defenders, I apologise if it seems this letter came out of the blue. For me, it’s been a long time coming. I hope you appreciate how difficult it must be to confess this – and all at once, too. So, the other day I was having coffee with a friend…
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To all our teachers (past, present and future), Thanks for choosing to be teachers. I know it must be a challenging task, particularly for those of you who work with children and young adults. When you’re working with young and impressionable minds, teaching is so much more than relaying information; it’s a grand performance and…
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An open letter to the family, friends, acquaintances, baristas, colleagues of a PhD candidate, and anyone who might have come in contact with one or even observed us from afar. Dearest Family, friends, acquaintances, baristas, colleagues etc, This is a really difficult letter to write – but I feel you’ve left me no other choice….
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From May 6-10 my friends and I lived on $2 a day to help raise money and awareness for those living in extreme poverty. Live Below the Line (as in the poverty line) was a campaign launched by Oaktree Foundation and supported by the Global Poverty Project. Funds raised go toward providing education and skills…
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The struggle of women varies from one cultural context to the next and it’s often difficult for those outside to effectively assist their sisters in other parts of the world. It can be challenging to put together a culturally sensitive campaign that helps, rather than hinders the progress of women living in a different context…
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I’m a strangely pessimistic person. I say strangely because I basically believe in fairies and rainbows and unicorns and leprechauns and karma while simultaneously believing I never win anything and bad things always happen to me. It’s a pessimism I rarely extend to the lives of others. Somewhere deep in my darkly twisted mind I…
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My best friend and I talk. A lot. Well actually, I talk a lot, she talks a regular amount, but we do talk often. I, being the over-thinker, frequently end sentences with ‘that’s exactly what I want my daughter to know.’ If you consider the fact that I don’t actually have a daughter, this might…
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I’m no relationship guru, but for the love of Thor will someone advocate ownership of feelings and spare us all the turmoil of the ‘does he like me?’ conversation. This isn’t an exclusively female issue but since most of my conversations on this have been with women, I’m going to address it from that perspective….
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We’ve all heard, or had forced down our throats, the importance of exercise and a healthy balanced diet. I personally never thought it necessary to abide by the healthy body, healthy mind mantra. I spent my adolescence avoiding exercise like the plague. My contribution to P.E. was sarcastic commentary offered from the sidelines. In retrospect…
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A colleague of mine once described the beginning stages of a relationship as the ‘best feeling ever’. She explained, ‘getting to know someone and the excitement of discovering what you have in common is just the most electrifying thing.’ Her comment was directed at her new boyfriend but I happen to think you can feel…
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So you’ve finished school. Maybe you’ve taken a gap year. Maybe you’re returning from a gap year. Regardless of where you’re at the lyrics of that John Mayor song spring to mind: Welcome to the real world, she said to me… condescendingly Whether we know it yet or not, being at school is part of…
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Valentine’s Day is upon us once more. I’ve never really understood its significance. No really, never. And it has nothing to do with the fact that I’ve been single since before I was born. There’s a great misconception that the only people who can hate Valentine’s Day are the bitter and twisted double X chromosomes…
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They tell us that hypochondria is on the increase thanks to the accessibility of Google and the ease with which we can source some pretty dodgy online medical advice. ‘They’, of course, being other people on the Internet. I contemplated offering you a dictionary definition of hypochondria but remembered I was no longer on the…
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