When I left the UK to travel across Australia in January 2024, I had no concrete plans to guide my journey and no real expectations about what the future held. I’d booked my first week of accommodation through a tour company, but everything beyond that was uncertain. Five months later, I found myself working and living at a hostel in Sydney, alongside countless other young people who had also taken a leap of faith and decided to travel the world.

Allow me to set the scene for you: it’s a Friday afternoon in October, and I’ve just finished working a typically busy pre-weekend shift at the cafe. My social skills are somewhat rusty due to having spent much of the summer in my own company since finishing university in June. As a result, the bustle of this new hospitality job can prove challenging to navigate, especially amidst the current ADHD medication shortage, causing a slight energy crash at the end of each day.


Nonetheless, I’m feel...

By Izzy Lepone, Third Year EnglishDr Emma Parker attained her undergraduate degree at Queen Mary University of London, before completing her MA at the University of Oxford, and her PhD at the University of Leeds. Emma went on to work at the University of Oxford and the University of Keele, where she developed her specialist research on the legacies of the British Empire. She is now a lecturer in Literature and Gender at Bristol.Emma spoke passionately about the ramifications of insecure employme...

Our attitudes towards our clothes are deeply influenced by popular culture and the seemingly endless stream of fashion microtrends popularised online. This vicious cycle encourages us to view clothes as disposable, specifically due to the rapid and drastic shifts between the different styles of clothes seen as ‘in’, causing our new purchases to become quickly less appealing and prematurely obsolete. When these newfound concerns are combined with the persistent pressure of ever-changing female be...

TRIGGER WARNING: this article examines sensitive topics of mental health issues, childhood trauma and toxic parental relationships in depth. If support is required, links to relevant and helpful resources are attached at the bottom.Although conversations about long-distance romantic relationships are commonplace, discussions of how distance might affect mother-daughter relationships are notably less common. However, the mother-daughter bond has a prevailing influence in many young women’s lives...

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) is a condition that affects 1 in 10 women in the UK, yet despite this there is a surprising lack of understanding around it. Even the name itself is misleading – it has nothing to do with cysts, the ovaries are instead enlarged by fluid-filled sacs. The NHS defines PCOS as a condition affecting the functionality of women’s ovaries, diagnosed by the presence of irregular periods, excess androgen, and polycystic ovaries. The cause of PCOS is still unknown, but it i...