Thursday, April 25Royal Holloway's offical student publication, est. 1986

Tag: Students

Marking the Study Abroad Experience
News, Opinion

Marking the Study Abroad Experience

The Connection Between Person and Place After tasting the cuisine, meeting, and befriending local people, walking through the streets and immersing yourself in a new culture and country, you make a connection to a place. Positive or negative, a connection is formed. This can take seconds, days or years and can change and develop as time progresses. An amazing weekend somewhere can leave you longing to return for the rest of your life. Multiple years in a place can leave you wanting to run away and never look back. When students study abroad, some form a connection with their country of study that can only be described as a second home: an intense emotional connection that leaves them planning their return before they even leave.  In society we often make specific emotional conn...
Issue Five Introduction: The Friend Game
Features, Lifestyle

Issue Five Introduction: The Friend Game

At six, I pledged to a girl named Isabel that she’d be my best friend forever. She was blonde. I was brunette. Despite this, Isabel always insisted on playing Gabriella when we re-enacted scenes from our beloved High School Musical. I started to hate her a tiny bit. At fourteen, we fell out over boys.  When I was nine, I told myself my best friend was a girl called Aoife. She was a bitch in the making, and something about that drew me in. She had a strength that I didn’t. But, like any blossoming bitch, she wanted to surround herself with other bitches (and despite my efforts, I was just a bit too off-the-wall to fit the bitch criteria). I haven’t spoken to Aoife since I was twelve, when her parents shipped her off to boarding school.  When I was thirteen, my best friend w...
oyvey
Creative Writing, Features

oyvey

behold the golem of prague how tothe first step is seeing them then talk to them then convince themsimpleso after saving them from that edgeplace your own edge on their throat and slice theirs open first before any seas can lay claim to it firstbefore earth before hearth before flame before greedy fingers pry their way to their tonguerip it out first beforeand then wear it in the mouthsit it in the right placecreak teeth out of placealign rows of molars incisors caninessculpt gum to fit perfectanother persons stolen tongueand when that is done and when you are caughtand when there is nothingleft to bare in their hotlampsleft to bear the roiling heatleft alone to step without rhythma syncopated disfunctionof them forcing that maw openad nauseam they will rip out your speechsear yo...
Vintage Kitchen: Victorian Sorbet
Lifestyle

Vintage Kitchen: Victorian Sorbet

Now that it’s summer, the weather is warmer, and the daylight hours are longer, it made sense to wrap this series up with an iconic treat that we all associate with the season. BBC Radio 4’s podcast, You’re Dead To Me, did an episode exploring the history of ice-cream. The podcast mentioned horrifying 18th century flavours from whale vomit to ‘out there’ ones such as parmesan and artichoke. Towards the end of the podcast, food historian Dr Annie Gray described a recipe from the Queen of Ices: Agnes Marshall (1855-1905). Agnes Marshall was a pioneer of ice cream and frozen desserts, using liquid nitrogen to freeze ice creams, long before the invention of the modern freezer. In 1885 she came out with the patent freezer which could freeze a pint of ice cream in five minutes and is considered...
Uvalde School Shooting: Where does it stop?   Gun Control has Proven to Fail once again
Features, News

Uvalde School Shooting: Where does it stop? Gun Control has Proven to Fail once again

Another school shooting has occurred. Significant lives have been lost. And yet, it only serves as a rehash of a story we’ve all heard before. The latest figures provided by BBC confirm that “nineteen young children and two adults have died in a shooting at a primary school in south Texas”. Because the ‘right to bear arms’ is constitutionally protected, the 18-year-old perpetrator was able to walk freely into Robb Elementary School in Uvalde with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.   In fact, the problem resides within this constitutional right itself. No matter how hard politicians or activists try to put provisions in place or change the narrative that we are all too familiar with, these atrocities will not be prevented. As seen in the Supreme Court’s ruling, from 2008 to the pre...
The Reality of Sex Work at University
Opinion

The Reality of Sex Work at University

All names have been changed to preserve anonymity. ‘I’ve been very lucky that all of the arrangements I’ve had have been with really genuine people’ – surely it indicates something foul when someone feels lucky to have encountered basic respect? Surely such respect, and ‘genuine people’, should be the norm? Are we so doomed as a society? I would like to believe we are not. However, when it comes to the industry of sex work, and young people entering it, it may be a different story.               According to a pre-pandemic stat by Leicester University, an estimated 5% of UK students turn to sex work, and one in five consider it. Remember, that is pre-pandemic. If Covid generated any mainstream student story, it was the...
Written from a dorm room in Hong Kong
Opinion

Written from a dorm room in Hong Kong

What International Exchange can do for you and the application process Eight months ago, I sprinted through Zurich Airport and boarded a twelve-hour flight. After fourteen days of quarantine, filled with temperature checks and Covid-19 tests, I was finally able to start my life in Hong Kong. I am incredibly grateful for my experiences here, which have led me to consider Hong Kong a second home. I have thrived in the education system, though the same could not be said for the summer heat. I have tried several new hobbies including bouldering and aerial yoga and continued my love of hiking in a place where the view of the city from the mountains is unlike any other.  Thanks to the friends I have made in Hong Kong, I have spent countless hours playing Mahjong and eating Dim Sum. Be...
Cash is King
Opinion, Sports & Socs

Cash is King

Is Formula One an Elitist Sport? At the start of 2020’s season, Lewis Hamilton reminded us that ‘cash is king’ in the world of formula one. The paddock is full of millionaires, each race a glittering spectacle of celebrity, champagne spray and the sound of multi-million pound engines. Each team is vying for sponsorship and the driver that can give them that all important sponsorship deal - if there’s no money, there’s no competitive car out on the race track. Take Haas, for example: with limited money behind them the past few years and a lack of points to go toward a constructor championship, the Haas cars have often been left floundering at the back of the grid.  2021 saw a critique of Haas’s new rookies: Nikita Mazepin, son of Dimitri Mazepin, owner of Urakali, Haas’s former ...