Student Stereotypes

After reading an article on The Guardian website, I felt like I should post about something that's taken as common knowledge in 2012: students and their drinking habits.

The article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/mortarboard/2012/jan/18/drink-worse-than-fees?fb=native&CMP=FBCNETTXT9038 basically claimed that all, or the majority of students drink far more than they should, far more frequently than they should. Written by someone who had been a binge-drinking student, it was the perfect way to get adults to stereotype young people even more than they already do. Because young adults can't win. If they're not out mugging old ladies and starting riots than they're pissing away their degree at the pub every night, right? Wrong.

Young people are not given enough credit for what they do. Yes, some of them commit crimes and spend their entire life at university so goggle eyed that they don't even know their own name but it isn't a lot and it definitely isn't the majority. We've got more people at university studying for degrees than we ever have, but instead of being proud of our teenagers for making something of their lives rather than popping out babies before they're twenty and never having a job, we stereotype them as useless wastes of space that care more about having sex and partying than getting a good degree and it's not fair.

I live with eleven people, all studying different subjects at degree level, and although we do enjoy going to our local pub, our lives definitely don't revolve around it, and when it's exam time or we have deadlines for important essays, we hole ourselves up in our rooms and work! Alex, for example, stays at the library way into the night, and Patrick's even done all-nighters because he's been so desperate to finish his work. And this isn't the weird minority who happen to be workaholics and social recluses: this is the majority.

One of my house mates, Becky, is on the same course as me, and we regularly meet up to do our work together, to brainstorm ideas and help each other out with structuring essays etc. Over the Christmas holidays we actually scheduled "revision phone dates" where she would ring me up and we'd pool all our ideas we'd had about the books we're studying, and we wouldn't talk about our social lives until the revision was over with!

Of course students enjoy going out: going to nightclubs is common practise for teenagers and most people enjoy going to them every week or so. It definitely isn't every night: if it was, and people were doing terribly with their grades they'd be kicked out of uni for a start, and secondly, how could they even afford to go out so much?

The article criticised university societies for putting pressure on people to drink with their regular club crawls, but I don't see this as being particularly pressurising. Student societies are a great way for people to meet like-minded individuals on a weekly basis and do activities relating to whatever they're interested in. Yes, they do have socials at nightclubs every so often but I for one don't need to be off my face to have a good time! I go to nightclubs because I enjoy getting dressed up, seeing my friends and dancing to my favourite music. I never take more than twenty quid out with me, and once you've deducted taxi fares and entrance fees, that hardly leaves room for me to be throwing up and passing out in back alleys!

In addition to this, the key point that this article misses is that people are actually passionate about the subjects that they're studying. University isn't like college, where you'd be doing a handful of subjects that vaguely interested you, but that you couldn't really care less about long-term. The grade you get at the end of your course matters: it has a direct impact on your future career, finance and life, and university students are intelligent enough to understand this and not mess it up with too many drunken nights out. What's more, I actually enjoy my subject! I adore reading and analysing books and I love being able to indulge my creative side with poetry and script-writing. I don't need motivation to turn up to my lectures because the content actually interests me and after all, I'm paying, not just for the degree but for my house on campus that lets me get to my lectures in record time. It wouldn't be within my interests to not turn up or do the work. If I wanted to go to clubs every night of the week than I'd be better off dropping out and getting a job at a shop or something!

Personally, I think that adults should invest more time into being proud of the next-generation and doing something useful with their own lives instead of subscribing to The Daily Mail's bigoted mindset and sitting on their arses bitching and moaning about people who are younger, better looking and more intelligent than they are.

Christmas in Manchester

Well, it's that time of year again, the time where everybody's stressing about buying people presents, when to put the decorations up and what on earth they're going to do for New Year's Eve! Christmas is when A Level and degree level students have to begin revising for their exams, when depression is at it's highest and budgets are at their tightest. Everybody's worrying too much to enjoy the magic and I must admit, stress is one thing that I have been guilty of this December.
However, it's not stopped me getting in the Christmas spirit all the same and for those of you who live in Manchester, you've really no excuse to be saying "Bah, humbug" this year! Once again, Manchester has hosted it's annual Christmas market which has gone from being a German market to a European market in just a few short years. Each year new stalls are added: I even spotted an Italian stall with every flavour of nougat imaginable this time! I'm not sure just how Christmassy tapas is, despite having a soft spot in my heart for Spain but I can't deny the magic of seeing so many different cultures mixing as one in one market.
You can buy Swiss pancakes oozing with Nutella or maple syrup, every kind of German sausage imaginable, the famous Manchester egg and even Lancashire hotpot! There's beer of every flavour, mulled wine, Belgian hot chocolate and so many sweets and cakes that overwhelmed even me!
That's not even getting me started on the craft stalls. From divine leather notebooks to handmade bracelets, wooden ornaments and knitted jumpers, there really is something for everyone. This year I've managed to acquire a purple sequinned wall hanging which will look beautiful in my flat, some hanging elephants and a beautiful silver bracelet, sorry, "cuff", courtesy of my mum not knowing what else to buy me for Christmas this year.
It does get pretty busy, however, especially at around tea time on weekends so if you do go, make sure to visit on a weekday to escape the queues and ensure you can have a proper look around at all the stalls. Besides, you'd much rather be eating your hog roast in a cosy log cabin than out in the rain surely? Another thing to remember is to take quite a bit of money along with you because with most foods being around £4.50, getting a hotdog, drink and cake can be a dear do, especially if you want to buy presents for your loved ones as well.

To wind down after the chaos that is the Manchester Christmas markets, make sure you pop in to The North Pole bar on your way back to Victoria Station. It's slap bang in the middle of Urbis, which you should be able to find pretty easily due to the neon painted emos that frequent the area come rain or shine. Inside, the bar is divided into three sections: the first is filled with fur rugs and brown leather couches overlooking (fake) log fires. It's as cosy as if you were in your own cabin in the Swiss mountains! The second room has a cooler vibe, with white picnic benches, huge snowflakes and silver glitter everywhere and baby blue walls, and finally, the third, Rudolf's room, is red EVERYWHERE like Santa's grotto. The bar not only has it's own unique range of reasonably priced Christmas cocktails (I got a Cherry Bakewell which is Glitterberry J2O, Amaretto and a cherry on top) for £3.50, there's also all the traditional festive drinks such as mulled wine, along with some non-alcoholic beverages such as mint hot chocolate and a range of fancy coffees.  Definitely worth a visit!
Some other things I've been doing to try and avoid the stress of all the uni work I have to do include taking part in a Secret Santa with my flatmates (I managed to find the best present ever for my £1 limit), buying a floor length gold dress to wear for my Christmas Eve motown disco in Bedfordshire, finding lots of books on Christianity for my Christmas list (because what better time to revisit a religion than Christmas) and we're also having a Christmas dinner together as a flat on the 14th. I am beyond excited, not just for that but for everything once my work is all out of the way on the 15th.

This is The North Pole Bar!

Now I just have New Year's Eve to worry about...

Tool Academy

Tonight's been wonderful. I've read Cosmopolitan and Vice magazines, spoken to some old friends, drank the most exquisite hot chocolate ever made and spent all night on 4od. 

One of the shows I watched was the first episode of this year's Tool Academy. For anyone who hasn't seen it, the premise of the show is that girls who are sick of their boyfriends behaving badly nominate them for the show. If successful than the boys are enrolled in Tool Academy and are forced to work through relationship issues such as trust, honesty etc. One "tool" is disqualified every week for not trying hard enough to change or whatever, and eventually just one couple is left. Hopefully they are a lot happier and if that isn't the case than their £25,000 prize money will certainly help matters. Wonderful.

Of course I was engrossed. 

Anyway, the series kicked off with the boys going on a night out together to get to know each other. Secret cameras filmed their antics, just to make sure that the boys wouldn't hold back in case their girlfriends caught them out. Not aware that they were being observed then, the boys proceeded to get very drunk, dance, shout at random people and throw up. Whatever, not very unusual. However. One boy told a shot-girl that he was single, at least three kissed girls that they'd picked up in the bar and the rest spent the night pulling girls skirts up and drinking shots out of their cleavages. And this is not a stag party remember. This is their average night out. 

What?!

The show then moved on to interview the boy's girlfriends about the things they'd like to change about their fellas. Now if you ask me, which no one ever does, you shouldn't be with someone in the first place if there's anything you want to change about them but then what do I know? Oh yeah, I don't go out with dick heads in the first place. ANYWAY, one girl answered the question with "Oh well I'd quite like all the lying and cheating to stop..."

Excuse me?!?!?! You'd like it to stop? Surely, SURELY, it is a God given right to DEMAND your partner not to cheat on you in the first place, never mind any time after that!

You see, what annoyed me most about this show was not the boys and their disrespectful attitudes to women, especially the ones who are supposed to mean something but the women who basically condone this by lying down and allowing themselves to be walked all over time and time again. How much disrespect must you have for yourself to allow somebody to treat you in this way? It can't be a happy relationship surely? Even if only one of you has wandering eyes then it's a sign that something is missing so please, don't just cross your fingers and hope that your man will change because I'm sorry but if you aren't making him happy as you are than you never will and by sitting back and letting him get away with these things then he'll never change. 

What's worse is the actual psychology behind this. It's easy for me to sit back and criticise these women for putting up with this crap on a daily basis but when you hear them say that they deserve it because they're "not exactly the best looking woman in the world and not a size 4" it breaks my heart. In our media saturated world, where people can't escape photoshopped bodies of women who are so beautiful that they can't possibly exist, the average woman's self-esteem is already ridiculously low. What our women need is to be told they're beautiful, and for their man's actions to agree with his words. They don't need to feel that they deserve to be treated badly just because they aren't as physically attractive as a catwalk model. Since when was love just about aesthetics anyway? If I loved someone I'd feel no desire whatsoever to cheat because why pick a random cherry when you can have the whole pie? (Oh God, you can tell I'm tired haha).

Surely it's better to be single than to be with somebody who makes you feel worthless, lies to you, would rather go home with pretty much any girl except you and refuses to change? If somebody wants to live the single lifestyle then let them: just insist that they be single when they are doing it.

I'll probably carry on watching the show in the vain hope that some of the men see the error of their ways and change but I'm probably the only person that actually wants this to be the case because, let's be honest, this show was made for drama. People want tears and tantrums and they want them now. They seem to forget that what they're watching on television is actually a real person watching live footage of the person they love cheating on them in a toilet cubicle and just laugh along, praying for even more drama in the next episode.

And I'll probably even fall into that trap. I don't like to think that I will but it's not much different to what I do with Made in Chelsea and what I'll probably be doing with Shipwrecked. 

Conclusion? Reality TV not only ruins the lives of the people who take part in it but it also renders it's viewers as cold and detached individuals who lose all sense of morality for the sake of entertainment. It genuinely saddens me. 

(p.s. This is probably terrible. I'm bloody tired and I literally bashed this out in ten minutes. I can't even be bothered proof-reading it before I post so I do apologise that it is appallingly written. Some rants just need to be written when they need to be written.)

Made in Chelsea

Made in Chelsea is literally the only thing that I watch on television, even though I lose a little respect for myself and humanity whenever I tune in. I'm not quite sure why I do. It's probably for the same reason that I eat fried chicken at the end of every night out despite knowing that it will make me put on weight, or why I still buy trashy novels by Louise Bagshawe purely because I know there'll be plenty of sex scenes in them - stupidity. 

You see, even though I can think of a million and one reasons not to like this show, I still do, just as I liked Take Me Out and Dinner Date, and so I've decided to try and review it critically and actually be honest about how terrible it is whilst trying to forget the fact that I have a mini panic if I miss an episode. 

Made in Chelsea is about stinking rich people in their early twenties who were, as the name of the show suggests, made in Chelsea. You know the type. They all carry handbags that cost more than my month's rent, they all simply adore going to polo matches and of course all own ponies or pedigree dogs. And guess what? They're all fucking shallow, pretentious people who you would instantly dislike upon meeting if you happen to possess a working brain. 

The girls (with the exception of Caggie, who actually seems okay and reasonably three-dimensional) all fit the stereotype of what it is to be a female completely. None of them eat, they all spend at least six hours a day shopping and having spa treatments and all any of them talk about is boys, boys and, oh yeah, BOYS. They don't seem to have opinions about anything other than who's shagging who in their circle of friends and as far as careers go, the only two that actually seem to do something with their lives other than go to masquerade balls and have their nails done are involved in, shock horror, make-up and jewellery design. 

The boys are even worse in that they all think they're big players in business when they're just little boys playing with Daddy's money. One of them whose name I can't even remember was devastated when he wanted someone to invest in a company that consisted solely of girls wearing little clothing selling lollipops in a sweet shop and he was laughed out the door, and another, Francis, seems to spend all his time prancing around saying ridiculous things and expecting people his own age to kiss his toes as he drones on about capitalism being good for the soul whilst probably not even knowing what the word means. 

So money doesn't make you an interesting individual by proxy then. 

Even worse than this are the attitudes that everybody on the show has to relationships. The girls all seem to want to find love and settle down while the boys pretend to the girls that this is what they want while really shagging anything with a pulse and dating numerous girls at once, professing undying love for any girl that so much as looks at them. But whey, this is what everyone's like, right? Fall in love after a day and it doesn't matter that you don't even get along because when one of you inevitably cheats and the relationship ends, you'll both be in love with someone else within a week. Please, I don't usually like making jokes about wanting to slit my own wrists but stuff like this makes it impossible not to want to. Are all humans like this? Is it just me that only likes one person at once and doesn't want to sleep with all my male friends purely because they're male? I really hope not. 

As for the actual structure of the show, I'm guessing that most of you know that it's basically The Only Way is Essex, but about rich people. If you're not familiar with either show, they're about real people and the lives that they lead, but put together in a way that it's like watching a soap. You know, so that it seems fictional, but you become more interested than you would in a soap because you know that the characters and their problems are real.

Surely, surely I can't be the only one to find this incredibly contrived. Oh, so the cameras just "happen" to be around when you find out your boyfriend cheated and throw a Martini in his face? They were just "there" when you meet a hot stranger in the park and ask him on a date? Come on.  As well as feeling wooden and staged the majority of the time, we also, as viewers, are left with the feeling that we're missing all the juicy bits which is really bloody annoying! For example, Millie tells us that Hugo cheated on her with "one of her friends" but not which one! Everybody on the show knows so if it's so "real" and gritty then why pick and choose the bits that are aired? 

HOWEVER.

Despite all this, I do watch the show and I do enjoy it, and do you know why? Because I like the gossip. I like to have a break from thinking about my own friends and my own boyfriend and think about other people's once in a while. I like becoming engrossed in their dramas without having to be worried that any of it is going to affect me or any of the people I care about. I also like sitting here in my shitty student flat, munching on dry cereal even though I'm already at least two stone heavier than anyone on the show, and thinking mean things about everybody on it inside my head because it's the one time I can be a total bitch and it not matter. There, I said it. I am nosy and a bitch, I like to spy into people's lives and criticise them while knowing full well that I am probably no better than any of them. It's a guilty pleasure and one that I know full well isn't mine alone.

That, my friends, is the reason why shows such as this are so popular. We like to revel in other people's break-ups and bitch fights without having to worry that it will have an impact on our own lives. We are mean. Goodnight. 

Christians are idiots.

I've started using The Guardian app. on Facebook. As an English student, I should probably have been buying this newspaper anyway but as a teenager, it obviously took Facebook to get me reading and not the lure of actually spending money on something physical. What can I say, I'm on a limited budget. However, my appalling lack of reading is besides the point because this evening, after returning from Manchester with a belly full of cherry beer and nachos, I was pretty happy and then after spending two minutes reading an article on this website, my blood was boiling, and not in the pleasant way that it is when I'm about to get some. 

You probably don't care why this was but because I'm pretty narcissistic, I refuse to believe that nobody really gives a shit about me and what I think and so I'll tell you. It was this article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2011/oct/15/creationist-disproof-darwin-evolution?fb=native&CMP=FBCNETTXT9037&#start-of-comments

(Note: you do actually need to read that to understand any of what I'm about to say.)

Now, I do not have a huge problem with atheists. I understand the arguments, and I agree that they're pretty impressive. Because they are. They rely on science and things that can be proven, concrete evidence. They're fascinating. However, something that most people don't realise when they decide to be an atheist is that you do actually need to do some research on both sides of the argument. Reading a Richard Dawkins book does not give you valid enough reason to be a hardcore atheist. It would make sense for you to also read some arguments by intelligent, rational Christians. The head of The Human Genome project, for example, is Francis Collins. He is an esteemed scientist, an extremely intelligent man and a Christian. He presents logical arguments for the existence of God. 

This patronising imbecile though, has clearly not done any such thing. This article is supposed to be a response to a Pentecostal Christian's questions challenging atheism but, and here is the problem we face here, it is not any such thing. It is a condescending piss-take that doesn't so much poke fun at Christianity but explicitly states that any religious person is an idiot, without actually answering any of the guy's questions. 

For example:

"the creationist, a presumably Penetecostal deacon from Lancashire, who lives in an alternate universe in which there is scientific disproof of evolution, suppressed by the wicked establishment."

This is the response to the questions which you have just read, the first being "How come something came from nothing?", which, I think most people will agree, is a perfectly valid question worth a good deal of consideration. Philosophers have spent their lives trying to answer this question but this bigoted journalist feels that he is above any such thing and so completely ignores it. The majority of the article consists of him not answering the questions, preferring to tell the guy to shut up and accusing him of living in an "alternate universe". The person asking the questions does not actually claim that evolution is a false theory: this is just the journalist doing his best to make the person seem as if they have been living under a rock for their entire lives and are therefore in no position to question anything. 

Atheists claim that for something to be true, it needs evidence. "I'll see and then I'll believe", is probably one of the biggest sayings amongst the atheist community. However, this man makes claims that he cannot possibly back up because they are literally just his opinions (for example, "Evolution is not God's enemy but his greatest alibi") without seeing the total hypocrisy in doing that. If you want evidence for God and for miracles and the like then give me some evidence for that. "ragadowblay" commented on the article saying "Man created god because man had to find a way of dealing with death", again, proof? If your main problem with religious people is that you find their arguments empty and don't see sufficient evidence in them then provide some evidence for the opposing argument!

As far as atheism goes, I don't see it as being any threat whatsoever to arguments of theistic faith. Well done, you can impress me with your science. Too bad that science actually brings millions of people closer to God as they are awestruck by the amazing precision of the world around us. Congratulations, you can scream statistics about how many people are killed as a result of religious fundamentalists or how many children are molested by Catholic priests. Well it's too fucking bad that you're too stupid to realise that PEOPLE doing evil things does not disprove God, it just shows that humanity is prone to fucking up on a pretty regular basis. And really, kudos to you for showing just how mature you are by resorting to mockery to get your point across. Yes, you may well be witty but if you have to rely on playground bullying to get somewhere then you're really not doing very well are you?

Fuck you Andrew Brown. I'm too annoyed to get my point across so I'm leaving it here.

Evelina - Frances Burney

'Evelina' was the second novel that I had to read as part of my "Narrative, Fiction and the Novel" at uni and I must say that it made far more of an impression on me than Daniel Defoe's 'Moll Flanders'. At first it intimidated me a little: after all, it's a fairly chunky book that was written in 1778, enough make even the most avid reader dubious. However, it only took a couple of pages before I was enthralled by Evelina and her "entrance into the world".

Evelina tells the story of a girl who, having been brought up in a rural environment by a Reverend, goes to stay in London with friends of the Reverend (and, later, extended family) and thus experiences what life is like for pretty girls of the time. She attends dinner parties, dances and operas aplenty, keeping in touch with the Reverend via letter-writing: the whole novel is an epistolary which means that the whole thing is written as a series of letters. 

Although at first Evelina adores this wonderful new life that she has been thrown into, she soon finds out that being a young, inexperienced woman is difficult and that her choices are often not her own. Not only does she get dragged from pillar to post as people she barely knows decide where the best place for her to stay is, but she also becomes the object of a number of male's affections, most of which are undesirable.

Due to her innocent nature, Evelina often mistakenly offends her admirers, causing them to tease and torment her throughout the novel, all of them seeming to think that she is theirs to do whatever they should please with. However, although Evelina may be unaware of the norms of high society in London, she is a clever girl and a very good judge of character and is thus able to recognise the appalling way in which she is being treated.

Writing to the Reverend about how these men disrespect and harass her on an almost-daily basis, we learn that although Evelina is wise beyond her years, due to the social constraints upon her, nobody other than the Reverend knows this as she is forced to remain quiet and well-mannered in public. 

I don't want to spoil the plot any further as I know quite a lot of people that are only part-way through the novel so I'll skip the specifics for now and go on to say that Evelina is a fantastic insight, not only into what it is like being a woman in a society where women are almost powerless, but also into the innermost feelings of a girl who is growing up and starting to become her own person. 

Perhaps it's because I am only two years older than Evelina is in this story, but I also find it interesting as I can relate to a lot of her experiences: learning what it is like to have romantic feelings for someone but to be completely in the dark about what to do with those feelings, the little things that happen that seem like the end of the world to a teenage mind and the constant feelings of being inferior to the people older than you because although you're not a child any longer, you're not quite an adult yet.

In addition to this, the letters almost feel like diary entries -  this enables the reader to establish an intimate relationship with Evelina as she confides in us, which certainly made me feel as if she was more of a "real person" than the protagonists in novels which are written by an omniscient narrator in the third-person. 

All in all, Evelina is a story that anybody can read. If you want to take it at face-value and read it for it's romance and all the fancy balls and whatnot then you'll be happy but if you want to delve a little deeper into the messages behind Evelina's experiences then it's also a great novel for discussion. 

It isn't a novel that you'd read if you don't really like books at the best of times because, obviously, the language is old-fashioned and at times a little difficult, with some archaic terms rearing their heads from time to time, but if you really do enjoy reading then please don't let this put you off as it really is a great read and definitely worth your time.

New blog!

Okay, so I was getting irritated at myself for letting my Voodoo Child blog get into such a state: it currently contains a lot of rants; a couple of reviews and a whole load of mental purging, whether that involves quoting lyrics or pieces of literature that I can relate to, uploading pictures that I like or entire streams of consciousness that nobody cares about, it's all there.
I'm still going to post in that blog but I'm going to keep it for more personal posts and use this one to try and refine my skills as a writer as they've actually got worse in the past couple of years which is really getting to me. This is going to contain reviews of books/films/places/anything else that interests me (or makes me want to drink bleach) , as well as the odd piece about something that I feel the need to rant about before I burst. You know the type: religion, abortion, conspiracy theories etc. etc.
There might even be the odd creative piece but I highly doubt it as that kind of stuff usually gets scribbled on scrappy bits of paper and hidden from humanity.
 Hopefully it will be pretty interesting but it doesn't much matter to me if nobody reads it: this is really just a place where I can come to write every so often so that my brain doesn't completely fry.