Trying to make sense of my little bit.
I was walking back to the House after getting my lunch recently and followed an older man down Montreal Street. He was wearing a fluoro jacket, beanie and tough, worn leather boots. The back of his jacket said, ‘Parking Warden’.
Don't forget the power of looking back as an inspiration to keep moving forward.
After spending sixteen years in our modern education system, I picked up a few habits that have not aged well. It wasn’t until I experienced a new way of learning that I figured out I was battling against a long-ingrained practice of staying silent.
I sometimes wonder about my time at school. The older I get, the more shrouded in a strange mist it appears in my mind, with me wondering, ‘Did I really spend twelve years of my life doing that?' PE lessons, projects about the planets, scales, stationary orders, clip tickets, hunting for change for tuckshop lunches, painful “talent” competitions at lunchtime, copying notes from the whiteboard, so many assemblies: I know it served a purpose, but looking back, the repetitiveness of school life seems horrendous. As a student, don’t you remember how hard it was to fathom that one day, you will be old enough to break free from the rules and structure of this institution and get to choose how you wanted to spend your day?
Whether you are counselling those affected, liaising with police, writing grants, sorting the accounts, organising fundraising events, keeping the social media feeds up to date, meeting with the government or doing the administration that it takes to keep an organisation afloat, I’m really sorry that you have had to “ring-fence” these funds.
Photo borrowed from here. Ever since I was introduced to PostSecret, sitting on my best friend’s bed at university, I was totally captivated. The founder Frank Warren started a simple, safe blog where people were able to send in a secret on a postcard anonymously to his address, and he would scan twenty each week …
You are not alone.
After what happened in our city on Friday, how can we face a week like normal?
Jemma Balmer 