Fears

I'm quite fortunate that I have only one crippling fear, and until this morning when it forced me to go to the gym instead of my usual run along the river I had never really seen it as one that dominated my life in any way. After all, there is only one season a year when this fear becomes a real problem. What am I afraid of? Magpies. From where I stand I can't understand not being afraid of them.
I thought I was doing alright in the scope of irrational fears until this morning, all dressed in my jogging attire, I stepped out my front door only to be faced with the meanest looking magpie you've ever seen. "It's more afraid of you than you are of it," I told myself as I fumbled with my mp3 player, too scared to avert my eyes from my nemesis. Then it happened, as if to prove me wrong the magpie walked right up to me, it's beak sharp as a razor and it's eyes drilling into the very core of my being, there was no way I was the lesser afraid in this situation. Rationally I told myself that everything was okay, magpies only attacked when protecting a nest and it was unlikely that a nest had been built in a tree amongst college buildings.
I must have jumped two feet into the air when the tortling war cry of the magpie sounded from behind me. I was outnumbered. Panicked I looked from one to the other and back again. I was surrounded. The volume of their taunting grew louder and I knew they meant business. I don't know how long I stood there gazing from one to the other, my heart beating up around my throat. I was frozen in fear.
As soon as my legs were able to carry me again I backed into the dorm, keeping my eyes glued to my enemies. Safe inside the safety of my room I could hear their victorious song. They had beaten me. For the first time in quite a while my fear had got the better of me. Was it rational? I'm probably not the one to say.

Can we just be friends?

Lately one thing that has been making my blood boil is the notion that if a girl is nice to a guy she is "leading him on." Males seem to have some kind of evolutionary right to get angry at a girl if she asks him to hang out and genuinely means just hang out. Why do guys always think there is a hidden meaning?
A few weeks ago I invited one of my male friends to watch a movie with me after we'd been talking about it at dinner. It really was nothing more than "Oh man I love the Blair Witch Project, I really feel like watching it now. Want to watch it after dinner?" yet he somehow seems to have a given right to be mad at me because I wouldn't let anything more than that happen. I spent the whole movie guarding my hands because the moment I let my guard down he would without fail grab my hand, something that I was not at all comfortable with. As the movie was finishing and I was getting tired I exaggerated my sleepiness and pretended to be all but asleep in a hope that this would make him leave, as this particular friend has a track record of not taking subtle hints to leave and getting mad when I ask more bluntly for him to leave.
Eyes closed and leaning on the wall beside me I played the part and he asked if he should leave (in an obvious 'or I could stay the night' tone). I said "Yeah you probably should" or something to that effect and eventually he did.
The next day I was welcomed to the dining hall by his friends telling me how much of a 'dog' I was because I had invited him to watch a movie and actually meant it. When the story of the previous night was relayed to me I was now the villain who seductively asked him back to my room and then held his hand before teasingly pulling away throughout the night. What horrified me the most was that according to these friends of his, when he asked if he should leave I told him "that it was up to him" and he was the gentleman who left, not wanting to take advantage. Can I throw up now? This blatant lie makes me feel physically ill. To have his friends telling me that he was the good guy because he left even after I'd spent the night seducing and teasing him. I can honestly say that it was one of the most uncomfortable nights of my life and I could not wait to have him out of my room.
When I asked my other males friends what they thought of his interpretation of the night they too put the blame solely on me. One of my friends remarked "So you asked him to "watch a movie" and then you chose a horror movie? What are you doing to the poor guy, Laura?" What infuriated me about his statement was the air quotes around "watch a movie." Call me old fashioned but when did "watch a movie" stop meaning actually watching a movie? And what am I meant to say if I actually want to watch a movie with a friend? Or am I just not allowed to watch a movie with male friends at all anymore?
I am probably either extremely old fashioned or naive, but this is something I continually see happening. Guys getting mad at girls because they have been "lead on" even when the girl has made it clear that she isn't up for anything more than friendship (as I had in my case). Guys, take it from me. Most girls aren't into playing games like that, if they say they're involved with someone else, or they just want to be friends they probably mean it and any further attention is unwanted and will make them extremely uncomfortable. There is a small percentage of girls who I'm sure do play these games (I don't actually know any, but I'm not going to rule out their existence) but these are not the girls you want anyway and you should not be encouraging that behavior.

I'll take my friend Ethan as hope that girls and guys can be uncomplicated friends.

More than just a pretty face

A man walks down the street
He says why am I soft in the middle now
The rest of my life is so hard
I need a photo-opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard

This week I find myself blogging from the familiarity of an airport lounge. As with many things in life I think you can enjoy airports as much as you chose to. Now I’m not saying that those 14 hour stop over between flights are ever going to be barrels of fun but in airports I do find the human analysis within me emerging. I like to put in my headphones, turn o something to set the mood, Simon and Garfunkle’s ‘Homeward Bound’ is my current choice, and try to gage what everyone around me in here for. That’s what I love about airports, everyone is here for a reason and everyone is feeling something.

To my right there is a younger couple, she has fallen asleep on her Kathmandu backpack and he is reading from his kindle. They’re both tanned and wearing comfortable shoes. It’s a pretty safe assumption that they’re backpackers but I try to imagine more. They look exhausted, suggesting they are at the end of a trip rather than the beginning. Is this their final flight before they make their way back home? Or are they from abroad with a long journey still ahead of them. If they were talking I would try to listening in and see if they are speaking with an accent or even in another language.

In front of me there are three men in suits sharing four beers. A business trip? They don’t look overly comfortable with one another so maybe they’ve just met or are nothing more than work colleges.

I like to imagine where everyone is from and where they’re going. For fun than the lounge are the gates. The gates are a wealth of greetings and goodbyes. If you sit at the gate and watch you can be witness floods of emotion; heartbreaking goodbyes and overwhelming welcome back hugs.

I think it brings us all back down to earth a bit more when we recognise the people around us as more than strangers, when we realise that they each have their own story and each of them is dealing with their own struggle. I guess that’s the point I really want to make, we all need to remember that everyone is dealing with their own troubles and the way they are treated by strangers can make a huge impact on how they look at the world, so we all need to be kind.

How much of ourselves should we put into what we create?

As an aspiring journalist I constantly find myself in the battle of how much of myself I should put in to my work. I want to be a journalist which means delivering hard facts and learning to recognise what counts as "news". However, separate of my desire to educate the public on current affairs I am also driven to put in writing the questions that I ask myself and the thoughts I have about what is occurring in our society. This begs the question to me, could my desire to put my thoughts in the public forum hinder my professional integrity?
I have strong opinions on many of the topics that I am well versed in, but if I publish these thoughts do I risk future employment at the fault of being bias? I strive to be a professional and to separate my inner writer from my professional journalist exterior but if a potential employer was to stumble across a particularly opinionated piece I had produced at the urge of my lectures to "just publish something" could I lose my dream job?
In addition to being of particular concern to those of us hoping to make it in the media I think this fear is relevant in any industry. The more of ourselves we put into something we produce the bigger the risk of it being rejected and when there is so much of ourselves in a piece of our work we just can't help but be hurt when it is rejected. 

The problem with "Border Protection"

Lately one thing has been really irking me, and that's the debate over Australian border protection. This phrase coined by Aus politics is one that, to me, perpetuates what I see as quite an insensitive stance on refugees and asylum seekers.
The term "border protection" connotes that are borders are in danger, that these people are infiltrating our borders illegally (do we still need to clarify that there is nothing illegal about arriving in Australia by boat to seek asylum?) and that they must be some form of terrorists. Many Australians really don't know a lot of the facts regarding asylum seekers in Australia and the corresponding laws. This is no fault of their own, by bringing the issue into politics the average Australian who is just grabbing glimpses of information rambled by politicians on the news would easily become inundated with the flood of conflicting information. When terms such as "illegal boats", "mandatory detention" and "border protection" get thrown in the mix it becomes pretty obvious why so many Australians are so hostile about a topic that they no relatively little about. Some of the misconceptions I have heard come from fellow university students are astonishing, the most common being that almost every right-winged student I have spoken to won't believe me when I say that over 90% of boat arrivals are found to be genuine refugees. There also seems to be a huge gap in the knowledge of what actually constitutes a refugee.
So here's my suggestion, what if we stopped talking about refugees as if they are a threat to our livelihood and we start talking about they compassionately and just occasionally make reference to the hardships they have already endured. I am willing to bet that with a change in language would come a huge cultural shift. After all, I like to believe that people are inherently good and that these acts of hostility are caused by nothing more than a miscommunication of intentions.    

Two of my third grade students from Our Home