The Stand
For students, by students 

We’re all familiar with the term ‘romanticising your life’. It’s a practice many people have adopted in recent years as a way of making life more enjoyable, especially with its popularisation on social media. A large part of this is choosing an aesthetic to follow, a style and way of living that follows certain rules and ideals. A lot of people argue that adopting an aesthetic is an enjoyable, uplifting thing to do, while others are beginning to question whether it is in fact

I found a really cute pastry shop, we should go there! A little reward for surviving my back-to-back lectures! This calls for a sweet treat! The ‘Little Treat Culture’ is everywhere. It’s on your Instagram feed and it is right in front of you at Spoiled. And personally, I am a big fan. I love walking around town and stopping in at a coffee shop to try their newest latte or even get a chunky chocolate chip cookie (gluten intolerance = successfully ignored). Friends of mine ev

Just a short bus ride over the Tay, and most of us write it off before we’ve been. We’re the ones missing out. View over Dundee and the Tay Bridge Photo Credits: @sam_and_her_cam Ask almost any St Andrews student about Dundee and you’ll hear a joke before you hear an opinion. For many of us, especially international students, the city’s reputation reaches us long before we ever visit. I think that reputation is lazy, and it's costing us. As one local puts it: “Dundee either

Credit: The Economist AI has grown tremendously in recent years at a growing rate that has led to a revolution in technology and productivity. It has been proven to be highly effective in many fields and is able to manage and analyze different things for all sorts of people. In the financial world, however, it has shown a different effect, as many are worried that it might heavily impact the future generation and take away jobs. The Current Effect of AI AI in the last few yea

Our lives have become dead set on stimulation. We have become so focused on us actually ‘doing something’ without any rhyme or reason behind it. Ultimately, we have lost the ability to accept boredom. We have become so uncomfortable with our reality that we feel as though we must fill every ‘quiet’ and ‘unimportant’ moment of our lives with some sort of stimulation. Boredom becomes so uncomfortable when you believe that the world around you is leaving you behind. It happens w

Credit: Pinterest ‘Men like it, and so it must be cosmically worthy’. This is the lament of Amy Dunne, in an early draft of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. She is criticising what to her appears to be the pointless conventions of American sports culture, and how in her eyes, the only reason people are expected to see ‘the poetry in sports’ is because it is something that predominantly men enjoy, and thus, is instantaneously granted cultural significance and authority. And alth

Photo Credit: Artist Collectives The Oxford Dictionary defines a friend as “A person with whom one has developed a close and informal relationship of mutual trust and intimacy." Throughout my life, I have been very lucky to experience this kind of friendship. From childhood, where spending hours together at school would blend into afternoon playdates, into staying one night or maybe two, never growing tired of talking or sitting or playing or being still, together. Into my ad

Photo credit: Pinterest We live in a society which repeatedly discourages people from dreaming big and tries to squash those who have high aspirations. We are told by parents, teachers, even friends that some jobs are unrealistic or useless because they won’t provide stability. They try to convince us to pick something more attainable. In a world obsessed with efficiency and hustle culture where it’s almost impossible to survive without a stable income, it’s no wonder so many

I made a challenge for myself when I moved to St Andrews: to go to the water once a day. Back home, I lived near a river, but hardly went. I never lived near an ocean or sea, and knew that the Fife coast is truly special. I took my walks, many solo, and explored the different beaches, snacks nearby, or ways to view the water from buildings (I recommend the Wardlaw Museum's balcony). These excursions are now an important part of my day, and I typically do them alone. On today'

Last year, at the end of second semester, a curious publication found itself in the hands of students entering the library in the run-up to exam season. While anyone unfortunate enough to be bestowed with this incoherent attempt at a newspaper could hardly assess it at first glance, closer inspection proved it a conservative (or perhaps more accurately, far right) mess of articles. As one anonymous student recalls: "Standing directly behind [The Saint’s library handout] were

My first year of university came with a rather horrifying realization: I could not focus on a single task for an extended period of time. I have always been a procrastinator, but even when I eventually got to work, I could barely go for forty-five minutes before looking for an excuse to take a break. Need I mention how sub-optimal this is when your deadline is only a few hours away? Credit: @pheebs on Pinterest Realising that my phone was a big part of the struggle, I started

Anyone who’s put the radio on in the past decade will have noticed a growing trend in pop music: lyrics that are openly critical of men. From the likes of Sabrina Carpenter to Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo, much of their songs centre around criticising male behaviour - particularly in romantic relationships. The themes are familiar: emotional immaturity, infidelity and overall indifference. So, this raises a question: what has made female artists become so vocal about being

As children, stories are central to our lives. Not only are they extremely beneficial for our development, but most importantly they allow us to expand our imaginations. They provide us with adventure, comfort, wonder, excitement, and empathy. I imagine every one of us (especially my fellow bookworms) will remember at least one or perhaps several favourite stories that they read as children. These stories have stuck with us throughout our lives and every now and then we redis

Mermaids’ student production of King Lear, directed by Eilidh Read, is an ambitious and moving stage production. Having seen both performances, it was clear the cast found their footing by the second night, settling into the rhythms of Shakespeare’s language and the emotional gravity of the tragedy. India Kolb’s Lear is at the emotional centre of the production. Kolb gave a driven and powerful performance as Lear; Kolb breathes life into every scene she is in, displaying re

Years ago, I heard a story about a woman in a university seminar who would start or end any contribution to the discussion with a “Sorry”. It was a “sorry” of the excuse-me kind, like when you brush someone with your bag while boarding a bus: saying, “I didn’t mean to, and I regret my intrusion”. One day, the professor, fed up, commanded her to “Stop apologising!” Automatically the woman replied, “I’m sorry”, froze, and put her head down on her desk. This apology was differen

Is the furthest you’ve travelled lately from the Main Library to Pret? Has your idea of “adventure” become doing the weekly food shop at Aldi rather than Tesco? Well don’t worry because luckily, BBC are offering the perfect opportunity to break out of the bubble that is St Andrews. The BAFTA-winning hit series Race Across the World is currently looking for Scottish students aged 18+ to take part in its next season, set to start filming this September. The show is searchi

Going home for Independent Learning Week never fails to feel like stepping into a time capsule. Like many parents, mine have turned my absence into an opportunity to transform my childhood bedroom into extra storage; each corner is now stacked with clunky cables and gadgets that haven’t been switched on in years. However, despite their long-dead batteries, these devices feel more alive than the technology I use daily to write notes, stream television and pay for a study-break

By Alexandra Ramsdale June 2011: that’s when I realised I had the autonomy to write whatever I wanted. I’d just been given one of those pink, sparkly, padlocked diaries for my 6th birthday. Barely legibly, I wrote my first line: ‘When I’m older, I’m going to marry [redacted]’... Source: Getty Images I wish it had been an academic statement. Or perhaps a philosophical declaration so I could claim myself a child genius. But there it was, plain and simple - a 6-year-old girl

I’d had too many trips to the highlands get stuck in the group chat. Last weekend, I put that right. Advice on accessible winter hiking was to stay low and south. Brief research brought me to our destination: Dunkeld, a historic village in Perthshire. Credit : Taybank Press Images The problem? St Andrews’s inevitably rammed social calendar meant finding a weekend which worked for all five of us would be a challenge. That weekend there was some university ball scheduled. We h

By Heather McLeod It is a unanimous fact among students (particularly us Gen-zrs) that there is never a reason too far-fetched to justify getting a sweet treat. Just survived an exam? Let’s go for a sweet treat! Made it to your 9am? You deserve a sweet treat! Managed to survive the week so far? (The fact that it’s only Tuesday is entirely irrelevant), sweet treat time! Perhaps it’s just my unrivalled ability to consume a superfluous amount of dessert without feeling ill but p