The Stand
For students, by students 

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

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

Literature has become obsolete. Literature has become meaningless and redundant. Literature has died – and this is coming from an English student with a concerning list of books to be read. The death of literature is not a new concept. One of the earliest proponents had brought the death of the novel-form to the attention of readers as far back as in 1925. José Ortega y Gasset addresses literature’s impending death in his Decline of the Novel (1925). Other media theorists a

By Bethany Dowell As October’s Halloween excitement fades and I’m pulled into the reality of deadline season approaching, my social media algorithms have been flooded with the idealisation of “locking in” for the final stretch of semester one. As a consequence, alongside completing readings, writing 3,000 words and attending society meetings, I feel burdened with the daily reminders to walk 10,000 steps, drink 2 litres of water and journal before sleeping for nine hours. On s