I have done more than my fair share of complaining about all things in and around education. I still stand by every one of these claims I have made or regurgitated but after today I need to make it blindingly obvious that everything I adore about school outweighs the flaws a billion to one.

In sociology, at GCSE specifically, we do a lot of evaluation on how big of a part school plays in comparison to that of your own family, the media etc. What I am getting at after a really rather overwhelming day is that school itself, and it's structure, is shit. (Swearing is ok, I have decided, as long as you back it up with the argument that each swear word is utterly socially constructed and instead of dwelling on my use of it you should probably dwell on why we have given meaning to a random string of four letters.) Yes, school limits people from certain backgrounds and doesn't teach the things it should and has such a huge potential blah blah blah everything I have ever gone on about recently. At the start of this academic year I led a few parent tours for prospective parents around my school, trying to persuade them to send their children to us. In a wave of brutal honesty I engaged in conversation with a woman who vocalised exactly what was on my lips: every school has to be run at a certain standard (arguably). But let's talk theoretical and essentially - with a pinch of wishful thinking - every school has guidelines and standards which mean that at whichever state comprehensive/academy/whatever you are going to get much of a muchness. While I know this is not even a valid point if it was this is the thing: as I told this parent in September, it is the way we as the students choose to interact with what is available to us.

In comparing school to friends and family in terms of a network of solid support I can't make too much of a clear difference. The support provided is obviously completely different and incomparable but the effect and value I place on them is equal. Today was the last real day of my form tutor/English teacher being at my school. I have actually forgotten why I started writing this - today has been as horrendous as is has been bizarre. Individual people have incredible capabilities to change who you are as a person in such short and temporary periods of time. You absorb them and learn from them and change and this change can't ever be measured until you are forced to acknowledge it. I can't say if this is specific to the schools I have been in and I really hope it is not, but there are some incredible, fantastic, wonderful people alive and if they happen to be teaching at your school then please realise it. I want to change people's lives and the way they think and I want to know that despite all these horrid things which are wrong with our society, there are people who care and believe and try to make a difference against all odds. There definitely are. Having someone believe in you who isn't obliged to through genetic means is worth the world. 

Sought out these people. I feel incredibly lucky to have had the support of people like this. Be inspired.

This has been really bloody cringey and I am mentally exhausted but also so very grateful. That is literally all - I now need to find a way to tell my mum that my phone charger is in school without getting killed and I don't think I can get out of it using the phrase social construct.

It astounds me that people are in the mindset that they are more deserving of all the opportunities a country like Britain has to offer, than someone born elsewhere. For the sake of example, Syria. Maybe once you've made a contribution to the - for lack of a better term - "goingson" of a country I can see your point but I still cannot and will not agree that anyone is more entitled to reap the benefits of a successful infrastructure than someone that happens to have been raised elsewhere. What effort or toil did you actually have to go through in order to be born in this country? Exactly! David Cameron can very well call the refugees and migrants travelling through Europe a "swarm" and a "bunch" but that doesn't make them more or less human than he is. So what if they're economic migrants! If you were in a country with few opportunities to support your family and obtain a job which you enjoy, the reasonable and obvious solution would be to move. 

I just can't get past the idea that we made these borders. We decided where one country would start and another would end. We drew them on a map. Some of the countries, governments and currencies have done well, have created good places for societies to reside in. Others haven't. And that's just the thing: some people succeed and some people don't. But I personally did not have a hand in ensuring Britain is a place where I get to attend school everyday and go to the doctors when something happens. And because I had no hand in making that happen, I have no more claim to it than anybody else, including those overseas in countries with corrupt governments and crumbling economies. 

I know it's not feasible to just get rid of them; I get that we are too deep into this now that we can't just decide to get rid of them all. I also get that there isn't exactly any practical solution - we can't have one power controlling the entire population of the Earth. I'm not trying to provide answers because if I did you'd have heard about them at the beginning. I am just really quite sick of hearing people talk so flippantly of the refugee crisis. Of using such vile, derogatory terms to reference them. Of genuinely upholding their own ascribed privilege to explain why refugees shouldn't be helped. Because, God forbid, it actually affects you! 

I hate to be that person and I know I am a lot of the time, but in relation to some people your problems aren't that big of a deal. They are very much legitimate and valid, but you are lucky enough to have been provided with years of education and even if worst came to worst there is facilities to deal with the aftermath of a lot of bad situations. These people may have fled a country engulfed by warfare, where their only chance is to leave for safe land. Or they may have left in search of better economic opportunities. But I do not think they are any less entitled to what Britain has to offer because the geographical location of their birth wasn't where you think it should have been.  

Just to briefly mention the wristbands in Wales, although I believe they are being reconsidered... How did anyone sit there and think that was a good idea? How did it go through the various meetings with no one recognising how scarily close branding someone as an 'outsider' is to Nazi policy? I know mankind isn't that done for! Marking someone with a physical item to identify them leaves them vulnerable and susceptible to the vile hatred that has blossomed in lieu of the refugee intake. It isn't hard to work out that people aren't always wonderful and this gives them the prime opportunity to put their views into practice. Yet no one stopped it, which just about reflects the pinnacle of the problem. 

This is very much short but sweet: I have such a clear cut, definite view on this. I cannot comprehend how something we ourselves created (borders) can be what creates privilege. It is absolutely crazy. I want, more than anything, for people crossing these dangerous seas and taking the risks of travelling to be regarded as human beings. Which, funnily enough, they actually are. (In case you hadn't noticed). Not only are they endangering their lives on these horrific journeys but they are also being met with incredulous hostility on the way. 

I've heard numerous people suggest that people are made more attractive by them not knowing they are attractive. Is that not only a morally awful concept, but also highly damaging? We shouldn't be enforcing the message that a) our attractiveness is measured in how other people see us and b) self hatred makes us more appealing. It shouldn't matter what other people think of us as long as we are content within the bodies we have. The whole premise that someone is only beautiful if they themselves don't believe they are is just undeniably detrimental. Think about it for a second. We are telling young children (in an intensely emotional period of their lives) that they need to be hating their bodies in order to increase their appeal to others. Self love isn't about anyone else. It's about you. It shouldn't be frowned on to like yourself! Surely, it has to be better than the alternative?

 Is it not bad enough that the media constantly and perpetually tried to tell us what beauty looks like, giving it a specific number on weighing scales and an ethnicity too? We shouldn't be building on that! We should be telling the young generations that the media is wrong and that you don't have to be skinny, blond and white to fit the label of beautiful. I feel like its all to obvious that this is just another instance where we've allowed the media to warp reality and it becomes the primary force guiding our morals. I want to believe in meliorism, I really do. I know that if one person has the capacity to believe in a society where we are allowed to actually be ourselves, free of remorse, then it's a belief that anyone can hold. We just need to remove ourselves from the situation for like, five seconds, and realise that it is not ugly to love yourself. What is ugly, is making people think that they need to hate the way the are in order to appeal to anyone else. 

This is prevalent everywhere - so many songs in the charts convey this very concept and that is why it's such a huge issue. Body dysmorphia is a real thing and we aren't helping at all with our archaic, backwards beliefs. I'm just exploring my own thoughts here, but this is surely a feminist issue. Girls take the brunt of the media's idealised beauty (not to excuse others impacted by the way we are expected to look, just hear me out) and the sheer heteronormativity in pop culture alludes to most of the pop anthems sung by men being about women. If it is primarily girls being told they need to be uncomfortable in their bodies, dislike the way the look and tone down the self confidence to appear attractive to a male then this is just another imbalance of power between genders. It is another example of where girls are still being taught these meek traits in order to submit to a male counterpart, and quite frankly it's repulsive. 

This is relatively short because I don't think there is really too much to even say. It's not a difficult thing to get your head around that it is disgusting to teach people that self hatred is the way to achieve affection from other people. I don't know that in this day and age self respect is even possible. We are so programmed to hate our bodies if we don't fit a certain image and, when asked to name traits both physical and otherwise about ourselves that we like, it's probably one of the most difficult things to do. I am absolutely as guilty of this as anyone else. But we can all at least give it a shot this year, to learn to actually love and respect ourselves for the sake of ourselves and no one else. Happy New Year! 

So sexuality is quite possibly one of the most bizarre and complex concepts in our society. (Keeping the tone equally as deep and severe as always). Such complexity is perhaps why it astounds me that one sexuality is assumed for the entire population of the planet and a person is required to state otherwise. Within sexuality we are able to define sexual attraction as a separate division to romantic attraction and your orientation need not be the same in both areas. And further beyond this within each division of sexuality there lies spectrums of where you may lie. Those widely acknowledged, though admittedly not all respected, appear to be bisexuality, heterosexuality and homosexuality. Not only does "bi-erasure" exist whereby those who identify as bisexual are deemed "indecisive" and "greedy", with very few characters in the media being portrayed under such an identity, but there are many more sexualities that are totally foreign concepts. 

Before I get into what these other labels entail and additionally how they have come to be, the whole premise of labels must be dealt with. Numerous times in the past I have heard and seen people questioning the purpose of a label and why people make such a big deal about assigning themselves one. I feel like labels are a very personal part of our identities and that it helps to relate to a word summarising yourself in a way that then links you to a community of others. However I also recognise that we may be moving into a period where it is not as an important necessity to be defined by a certain label which proposes a further development - why does the need to befit a pre-existing identity prevail? Why do I have to be gay, straight, pansexual, cupiosexual etc? Am I not at liberty to go with it and just see what happens? It is this liberation, this new found emancipation from archaic concepts that suggests we need not be so quick to name ourselves. But I really do think this is a long way off, that people are comforted by a term that suits how they feel and in turn allows them to feel unified by it. This familiarity has led to dozens of new sexualities arising among platforms of social media and beyond. 

To say "new" sexualities would be a lie. There is nothing new about the feelings people experience which have, in fact, resided as long as humans have had the capacity to feel. The means of attraction have just been broken down and split up into much smaller brackets and there is so much more than just straight and gay. (Side note: gay can just be an umbrella term for anyone in the LGBTQ+ community). It is now recognised that there are people who have no attraction, very little attraction, attraction only to those identifying outside the gender binary and so on. I believe it is absolutely vital that everyone is aware that such sexualities exist and are valid - they are valid the moment someone chooses to identify as it and you nor I are in any position to erase that. I'm not going to sit here and list them all; I want you to take your own time to sit and educate yourself, use the incredible tools at your disposal to ensure you are not at risk of erasing such an ingrained element of someone's own individual identity. 

This also leads on to the very premise of heteronormativity. This expansion of the sexual spectrum must and should correlate to the wonders of the media - it is social media itself at the hurricane's eye of the advancement we have before us. And yet other forms of media are so far behind. You barely have to turn your head to see that the representation of, well, anything that isn't heterosexual, is appalling and astonishingly low. In adverts, films, TV shows, books magazines and everything else imaginable we are graced with straight couple after straight couple. So when, in the social justice side of twitter and tumblr you see the words "I hate straight people" adorning someone's profile and your straight pride is severely damaged, please step back and assess the situation. It is similar in this effect to reverse racism: masses of social structures celebrate and give power to heterosexuals and allow them to advance while others trail far behind, facing the aftermath of what straight privilege allows. Someone saying that they "hate straight people" is essentially them hating the institutions and social concepts created by straight people to benefit themselves. 

Moreover, determining our society as one of progression does not factor in the ways in which we have progressed. While, yes, there has been extraordinary improvement in comparison with how it once was but we've entered an age where gay relationships are now fetishised. The classic "gay best friend" exclamation after someone comes out suggests that our society is accepting of homosexuals only when they exist to serve a purpose to the heterosexuals. Despite common belief, gay people are not pets nor are they yours to befriend the minute they publicise their sexuality. Far less are guilty of critiquing gay pride festivals and the like but so, so many people are quick to pull the gay best friend card and every time it is used, the gay community is objectified and their individual identities erased for your gain. 

This has been a complete mess and compilation of a few things running through my mind. I think, at a glance, we can look at sexuality by its face value. But it is genuinely a very overwhelming and complicated matter and is not made an easy one to discover ourselves when so much of it is shamed and fetishised and still not accepted across the world. Given its importance to many individuals it is also an easy mistake to take it as an entity, that sexuality is all that makes up a person. We are all more than our parts and if we are able to find a way to accept and love who we are, it shouldn't matter what anyone else believes. Please don't rush into trying to label yourself and remember the most important thing I want you to take away from this: sexuality is fluid. You have every right to change your mind as frequently as you please and anyone who can't accept that about you isn't worth having around. 

Charlotte

I don't even know the full historical context, I don't know why there is a war in Syria and I'd love to make the time to sit down and really understand the political ins and outs but for now this is how I feel without any of that. I think, first of all, it's absolutely disgusting that the media chose only to adopt a sympathetic narrative (using the term "refugee" over "migrant") after the image of the boy on the beach was released. It makes you wonder how long we could have gone on treating these people with such vile disdain, had the image never have been taken. The boy would still have been found dead on a beach, just with no photographic evidence. The fact that it took a public reaction to the image for our government to show sympathy on the matter is terrifying. These people died before and after and during the release of the devastating image. I think it speaks volumes that people had to see the horrific realities of the Syrian crisis before they would acknowledge the problem, that it wasn't their issue until they were exposed to it despite the war beginning years ago. It makes me feel sick to my stomach that, in debates surrounding the refugee crisis, those advocating for more action in Europe have to adopt the argument that these people are human beings. They come from whatever country and are travelling for whatever reason and are still human beings. First and foremost. When these human beings are making life threatening journeys across dangerous land and seas just to escape, something is wrong. I don't understand how anyone can fault the intentions of these people; whether they're travelling for money or for safety they are all making these awful treks just for their cause. I couldn't possibly begin to imagine what thought processes must occur for someone with children and a partner to find the most viable option one which doesn't promise survival. We need to remove ourselves from the situation, allowing a wider perspective. Families with very young children are risking everything, sailing on tiny raft like structures across stupid lengths of water just to be met with an even longer journey ahead. 

Is Britain doing enough? I guess relatively, yes. But no. European countries, and saying that, the world in general, should be doing considerably more to help these people. Yes it is a good start and anything done to help these people is something, at least. But according to something I read in my Law lesson a few weeks ago, during the Balkan crisis we took in about 75,000 refugees a year and our infrastructure managed perfectly. We are taking in 20,000 refugees across 5 years. Additionally we're taking them from the camps in Syria which erases all the people already taking the dangerous journey across Europe.

I also wanted to briefly add that if someone is willing to go through those conditions and that physical hardship in order to gain the opportunities of a better life, how can we ridicule them? We were born with the right to these things so we can't put ourselves in that position, can't imagine facing near death experiences in the hope of a life we take for granted every day. If "economic migrants" are taking the same trip as people fleeing from war and conflict something is severely wrong with the infrastructure of the land they are leaving and we must treat the root cause, of course, but we have the capacity to offer these people opportunities that are given to us without a second thought. Why not them? I actually heard someone suggest the other day that we filter the people striving for citizenship in Britain so that only the best people are allowed through our borders. I shudder to think what would come of those deemed not worthy of our system. 

My thoughts are a bit of a mess here and I often change my mind on where I stand but all the same, it astounds me that arguing that these people are human beings is something that even needs to be pointed out. They never chose to be born into a country of warfare and corruption. You and I are blessed to have been born into a 1st world, western, developed country. From day one it was almost guaranteed that we would never have to put our lives in danger and make hellish travels across a continent to be safe or to find a better quality of life. What entitled me to that over someone born on Syrian soil? If you refrain from religious perceptions, what made me any better as a five year old child than the one lying dead on the beach? And why, knowing that we have this incredible privilege where we aren't caught in the middle of a war where our lives are endangered, can we not help? You aren't fucking superior to them just because you were lucky enough to have parents who chose to give you citizenship in this country. You literally are a human. They are literally humans. The difference between you is created by borders and it is those man made lines on a map which are making a frightening number of people be so against helping another human being in a situation out of their control. I've argued about this in school and people are so prone to suggesting that we have to protect Britain, British values and our culture. If British society dictates that we are too self-righteous and bigoted that we refuse to do everything we can (which, by the way, is a lot more than we are doing currently) to help these humans, then I'm ashamed. I feel honoured and lucky to be instilled with British values, to have been raised where I have been, and been provided with the education, food, healthcare etc that has been provided for me, which is why I can't quite believe the reaction of the public and the media narrative towards this issue. It's been disturbing and alarming and a genuine shock. 

As I said, this is just a random collection of what seems to run through my mind whenever the topic arises. I don't think I'm right, I'm not educated enough on the issue to give an informed opinion so this is just views which were products of my experiences and my own values. I also don't have a practical solution and it makes me want to curl up in a ball and cry when people argue back with: "Well, how do we solve it then?" I DON'T KNOW. I wish I did. But I have no idea and I am just emotionally whining over how we seem to have lost touch with the idea of humanity when I still believe so firmly in the solidarity of humankind.

I, of all people, know how hard it is to a) make time for reading and b) pick it up again after you haven't for so long. At the stat of this year and briefly in the summer I hardly read at all and couldn't break out of that slump for quite some time. You need to find the right book to crack it but also you need to dedicate the time to reading and to properly delve into the story. To do that, you could go really far and create the whole environment in hope that that is what you need; you could make a cup of tea with some biscuits, put some very tumblr aesthetic fairy lights on and play some music, although I can't really focus with most genres on. I tend to be comfiest reading in bed but change the way I'm lying/sitting honestly, about everything 3 pages. No one ever said reading wasn't ugly. (God, if the wind changed while I was reading...)

  So, make a good old cup of tea - a tiny bit of milk and one sugar is always the way forward. Don't fight me on this. EVER. A tidy room always helps although I tend to use reading as my reason not to tidy my room anyway, so... Definitely have the curtains closed unless you need to natural lighting, shut your door and make sure you're warm. As I said, sometimes I struggle with background noise, especially music, but that being said I do have a long list of musical recommendations for when you're settling down with a book. Film scores, I always find, are really excellent backing tracks if they fit the mood of your book and aren't too captivating. I will always, always recommend the film scores of Like Crazy, the Kiera Knightley version of Pride and Prejudice and also The Theory of Everything. Among others these are really wonderful pieces of music. Lucky for you, I created a Spotify playlist with all my favourite songs to play when I'm reading! Here it is: https://open.spotify.com/user/charlotteto/playlist/1sGe1pWhtR7ogxlGGxkWQT

On to the real cause for writing any of this: books which pull you out of that awful reading slump. There are a few that have always worked for me but I think it depends a lot on what you like to read. Don't push yourself to read anything you doubt you'll enjoy because that will only take you further away from it. If you're not a classics person, don't pick up Wuthering Heights and expect to be fine and dandy because it will create a psychological aversion to reading which, obviously, is the last thing you want. So, with that in mind, I'll mention a few that have made me want to read another 40 books and never stop. Attachments by Rainbow Rowell is just a really lovely read. It's very easy to read but it's story was different to a lot of things I had ever read and additionally, before anyone turns their nose up knowing Rowell as a primarily young adult author, this book is classified in the library as adult fiction. It's very entertaining for anyone who's still growing up now and wasn't able to comprehend their environment in 1999 (I was born in September of that year so, no, not in a state to process my surroundings). Set in that very year it follows a nerdy young man working at a company where his job is to read through emails of a company which have been flagged up for various reasons, usually inappropriate, non work related conversations. He falls in love with someone through her emails with her friend while also dealing with something which now seems ludicrous - at the turn of the millennium from 1999 to 2000 something called the Y2K bug was a massive issue. Essentially it involved the transition in terms of the date on computers when the year changed. (Read more here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2000_problem). With their old technology an amusing contrast to our current advancements, it does make me smile. The love story is different and unique and gives an insightful perception to the superficiality of many relationships, with our two lovers not meeting until late on. Friendship is also a huge part of it and I think that it would be a really great read for a wide age range for various reasons. 

My second recommendation is a YA book. If you have any prejudice, either scroll down or get over yourself and give it a shot. It's not the most well written and, of course, it's a dystopian society. It's a book called The Program by Suzanne Young and I read it so quickly that I wondered how I'd ever stopped in the first place. The book is quite relatable despite its futuristic setting and I'd describe it as strangely topical, or at least aligned with the general narrative of social media. It deals with topics of suicide and physical indicative signs of depression as an illness. Having read it a while ago before I became more educated and aware of mental illnesses I couldn't say how accurate and sensitive it was, so I wouldn't recommend it if the topic is one you're dealing with yourself or is close to home. However when I did read it, I was out of my reading slump straight away regardless and that was the aim. I haven't read the second book in the series and have no inclination to, I wouldn't rate it in a literary sense at all but in terms of serving its purpose, definitely. 

Next is actually a "classic" but far from the horrifying syntax of things like Kerouac's On The Road. A Little Princess by  France's Hodgson Burnett is a children's novel published back in 1905. Since it is written for children it is such an easy read which really allows you, as an older reader, to devour the contents of the story. It has some really cool (is that the right word? I thought it was cool...) deeper meanings and areas for analysis as well as employing a timeless plot which will always have relevance in our society. It challenges your morals and forces you to place yourself in the shoes of various characters while also giving you insight into a 20th century experience which you might not have really had before. You'll read it in one sitting, maximum two, and I give a 90% promise that it'll propel your eagerness for reading instantly. As a teenager I think that I found it easy to relate with Sara who is mentally far beyond her years which, I think, was also a really cool concept of the book. Due to this I'd say that it will always be enjoyable to all ages as long as they accept the simple style of writing. 

Looking at my bookshelf there are loads more I'd love to mention. The One by Kiera Cass is another YA read which was equal parts amusing, stupid and enticing but with such mixed reviews I couldn't recommend it. Things like Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins and that whole series are fantastic if you're on board with mushy, textbook romance with some unique and well written characters. Harry Potter is an obvious one and the first book alone is so quick and fun that it should put you back on track whether it's your first of 50th time reading the novel. Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild is another 20th century wonder written for a young audience with the sweetest, loveliest plot and characters which I absolutely adore. My main piece of advice is to allocate the time and ensure the book is right - read something you've read and loved before and go for something simple and quick. I really do rate the children's novels of the 1900s. If you're still stuck for ideas there's a bunch of YouTube videos on this, but my first port of call would always be my mum (who is also a librarian, like me!), my English teachers, and the Internet. 

P.S with books like A Little Princess and Ballet Shoes which I've owned my whole life, I'd more than happily lend them out to people who know me in real life! Hit me up. ;) 

Charlotte. X 

P.P.S How does a post on reverse racism or rape sound next? I've been quite rant-y so far this week and I need a healthy outlet. Also I feel like a sexuality and gender awareness post is in order. Let me know :)