All Aboard the Good Ship "Safe Internet Use"

I've been meaning to do something on this for a good long while, but in light of recent events to hit the news, this post seems all the more relevant. It's on one thing, and one thing only: how to use the internet in three easy steps.

Step one: Don't put any personal information out there. To anyone. That means addresses and numbers, hometowns and the like. Doesn't matter how long you've known them, I've known a group of people on the internet for a good six or seven months. We follow each other on twitter and instagram, and some skype each other, but it goes no further than that. Do not put information out there that could be dangerous to you.

Step two: Do not put personal stuff on the internet. This is different from personal information, this is about things personal to you - how you feel, if you're depressed, unstable, suicidal. People can use that against you, and the wrong people will use it. The same goes for photos: they could end up anywhere, and you probably won't find out.

Step three: Enjoy the internet. Find sites that you feel comfortable on and use them, BUT if you're on a sight that is making you unhappy, do not stay on that site. At the end of the day, it's your choice to be on there, and it can be hard to break out of a habit, but if the thought of going onto a site makes you unhappy, just don't go on it.

Step three is kind of the most important to be honest. What happened recently is a terrible thing, it is, and there is no way to explain how terrible it is, but: it is at the end of the day, your choice to be on the internet. Trolls don't have a hold over you, you don't have to do anything for them, if you just step away. You get days where you have no creativity, or you don't want to talk to people, and you just want to punch things viciously and throw things. That's okay. I've had days like that, when I've received anon hate. I did two things: I stepped away from the computer and I had my melt down. Sure, I ended up forking out £20 because I smashed up some candles, but that's better than damaging my skin, or my life. And the second thing I did: I turned off the anon option. I took a few days out, gained perspective again, and took away the trolls one route to me.

People who call for the internet to be moderated forget one thing: you can't expect 180 people to man 6 million blogs or whatever. It's not fair. The internet is a great place, but it's also a horrible place. Times have changed, people need to wake up and smell the coffee. It isn't the place of the people running the sites to teach you how to behave - it's your place. To use the internet safely, people need to be calm, considerate and use it with intelligence and common sense.

As soon as there's a cultural shift, then maybe, just maybe people will stop calling for the same out dated arguments, and start realizing that our safety on the internet is down to only one person. Ourselves.

The Wobble

I have to admit, when it comes to being proactive and remembering important things to do, I'm pretty rubbish at it. And therefore, when "stuff" (more on that later) my blog got shifted to the side, and I had writers block and basically there was no way in hell I was writing out a good entry. That, it seems, has cleared...or at least, it has for now.

I'll start now by reminding you of the date, August 1st. That means, for those in the A-Level know how, we have less than 15 days until we get our results, determining the routes that we well may take. Thus brings me to the point of this blog entry, which because I'm not particularly eloquent, or well versed in medical terminology, I'm going to call "The Wobble". "The Wobble", is the byproduct that comes from moving from the intense, high powered exam season, to the nothingness of the months of holiday/waiting period. It's basically the equivalent of running a marathon and then suddenly dropping off the edge of a cliff, ie very nasty, and also, surprising.

I'm now reminded of a comment my law teacher said, about the holiday break. His words were something along the line of "you'll be so bored you'll want to come back from school". I at the time, laughed at that, assuming that the holidays would be jam packed and I'd never have a moments rest...I was wrong. To start with, in the first week, I did nothing - by nothing I mean, sat in bed and watched telly, slept and did no socialization. This week however, carried over into a month of nothingness, where I slowly became more and more drawn into myself, and began to become a recluse. In other words, nothing good. This was broken by the odd family trip, and a disastrous holiday which ended in me being forced to come how and promptly be diagnosed with moderate to chronic anxiety, and boom I was on a waiting list.

In a month, my life had lost it's structure, and I'd lost my way. With this, I lost ambition and sight, and fell into a hole of pity. I fluctuated between days of "university is the one for me" and "I haven't got a hope in hell". I slipped out of patterns and into nothingness. I lost sight of myself. And, more to the point, I had no idea how to come back to myself.

This, is the wobble. It's a moment of complete terror, where you lose everything, where you curl up into yourself, where you're stranded and alone. Isolated. It can be as short as a day, it can be as long as months, but the chances are we've all had it. And, we've all survived it. In our own ways. And so, with the days running up to the exams, I'm feeling pretty confident and saying we're all going to have wobbles. I'm also pretty confident in saying, that we're all stronger than we think. We may not know this, not consciously, but we are strong. We're strong because instead of allowing every bit of bad news to take over, we've found a way to carry on. And we will again.

And, as an extra note to all those not sure if they'll get their grades: it's okay. It's okay to fail, to not do as well. It's okay to change plans, to try again. It's okay not to be amazing, because you will survive this. You will get through, and you will become something. You may not become the person you planned to be, but you will grow. Results don't grow on trees, but neither does your future. It's up to you. And only you.

With that, I wish everyone getting their results good luck.
Fingers crossed!

An Open Letter to: Examination Boards

Dear examination boards
On behalf of every single student that ever went through your exams, I would like to thank you for the crippling stresses you have put us through, the mindless cramming, the terror of turning over a sheet of paper...you get the idea. Because of you, examination boards many, many of us will pass our exams with flying colours, but similarly because of you, many will also fail, categorized because they failed to fall within time limits, or simply do not have exam technique, and blocked in turn from reaching their full potential. I would like to further thank you, for this instilled belief that many now have that, if you do not get said grade, you will fail to achieve your place in life and find yourself falling into the mindless place in the middle lane.

Best wishes,
Alice

Of course, I'm being facetious. There's no way I would ever be able to talk for every student, I don't know them. But, with the news that GCSE examinations were becoming exam focused and dropping the coursework orientated element, I was filled with a) an overwhelming cackle of laughter, but mainly b) a sense of pity for the students who will be dealing with these changes. As an A-Level student, I like to consider myself a veteran of the examination board. I also know, I wouldn't be an A-Level student, had it not been for the coursework element of GCSEs. I will straight up say it now: I'm a good writer. That's not me boasting, it's a fact. I grew up writing and I enjoy it. A piece of writing coursework, like an essay is something I genuinely enjoy writing and will get a good mark for. My essay technique is good. My exam technique....not so much. And this I feel is what will inherently be the downfall to bringing in the new style of GCSEs - people are not born with exam technique. Exam technique is a learnt and honed skill, not everyone is blessed with it (of course, some are, but even they will find their struggles I'm sure). I would even go so far as to say, the majority of my A-Level studies have been devoted to finding that exam technique.

In other words, the coursework element, the saving grace of many students lives during GCSEs, was what pulled me through. Without it, I would have done significantly worse. By removing this coursework element, you are doubling the stresses these students go through, there will be no back up (I tend to feel this way about the removal of the January exams too) and furthermore, you will not only be changing one element of exams, but the government will have to change an entire teaching style to build that exam technique far in advance. And that seems neither fair nor....feasible.

I'm all for change, but changing a complete style in my opinion seems rash and unthinkable, because of the long term ramifications because of these changes.

Then again, I may be completely wrong.
Guess we'll find out....

The Impossible Quest: The Search for Perfection and Acceptance in Society - The Media.

In times of late hours, after spending times searching through the tags on tumblr, breaking occasionally out of the fandom tags, I find myself sitting and questioning, with no official means to express my thoughts. Not anymore. I should probably establish now, that I love Tumblr. Compared to Facebook which is old hat, and Twitter, which terrifies me, Tumblr is the place as one such user put "a home for misfits, the people who don't quite ever belong". I place myself firmly into that category, and in that a find a strange sort of contentment. I feel that I sometimes, am alone in this. It was on one of these trips where I was speaking to someone who I feel I know quite closely, who writes about her depression. She is of course, not alone in this. Go on to Tumblr and search in the tags "depression", "cutting", "suicidal", and you'll find 100s of people who identify with her. I personally, have never reached such a low. I am proud to say, that never once have I contemplated slicing my skin, or killing myself, but I know people who have. People who I was once close to, and who have drifted apart, and people who I feel very much connected to. Suicide is not the taboo at which it once was, and whilst this in itself is a positive thing, it is at the same time a wholly negative thing. People feel, dare I say it, too content with the concept of suicide. There is not so much a fear of death as a whole, rather more a welcoming of it. I'm not saying we should return to the middle ages, but at a point where such things as sitting up at 3am to talk someone down from doing something stupid becomes a common place, and expected, I feel there is something truly wrong with society.

And such comes to my thought. I know more people who cut, than those who don't. And I have to ask why? Why, when these people have so much going for them, do they feel that the only answer is to stain their skin with a knife, to get a small relief from a burning hot pain. It is, a psychologist would say: to gain a sense of control. I see it far more simply: there is too much pressure.

Let me explain, turn on your television, and go to your TV guide. Now tell me how many shows portray "constructed realism". I talk of course, of the shows such as TOWIE, MIC, Jersey Shore...they portray the ideal to some people, but is it real? Now, turn to a magazine. Each picture, asides from the deliberately unflattering ones, will have been edited, highlighted and turned into something fake. Is that real? Clearly not. Turn now to the newspaper, to every single unflattering article of "Binge Britain". To the wave of knife crime we had a few years ago. That...is that real? It's come from the newspaper, surely it must be more real than the television. And yet, this is where the struggle really comes into play. As a teenager, I am stereotyped. On a daily basis. People will look at me, because of my age, and they'll assume: that I drink, that I smoke, that I carry weapons or I go around with 'dangerous' people. This is of course, preposterous, I'm a white middle class teenager from a south London suburb, do you really think I'm going to "shank" you in a dark corner? Please. And yet that won't stop people believing I will. Here's some cold hard facts for you nay sayers who believe that teenagers spend every weekend getting drunk in parks. The highest amount of people being taken into hospitals and police cells for being drunk are not as you believe the young under-30s. No here's some cold water for you, you the professional, who deem me to be unsatisfactory and dangerous, are actually far more likely to be drinking than me. And that's fact.

You will of course deny this, but it's true. It won't be featured in a newspaper however, just in the back of research bids and alcohol statistics. It won't be printed, because it won't be liked. But of course, to blacksheep anyone under 30, has now become a common thing. And why? Because the media says so.

Tell a child they're special when they're young and they'll accept it straight away. Tell a teenager there's something special about them, and they will not believe. That's the reality of the situation. A situation that is so out of hand that people believe it is okay to assume the complete untrue. And, leading back to my original point: I will never live up to someones expectation. But the pressure? Oh that's so overwhelming it hurts. And when you, you the adult who tells me that "these are the best years of your life", and who says "they understand".  Stop. Just stop. You don't understand, because times change and people change but you will never be judged the way I am. You will never know how it is to be looked down simply because of the way you dress, you will never be asked to leave an area because you're wearing a certain outfit and you're with your friends. You cannot know how it feels to be us, and that's not your fault, but you simply cannot. And when you say you can, you're setting yourself up to fail.

And in the end, sometimes, just sometimes, I understand why people cut. Because it's a frightening world. And people judge. And sometimes, just sometimes, it's that selfish lash out, that small bit of control. But it means the world. Before you can change a person and help them, something must be established. A mutual understanding. And right now? That's simply never going to happen.

A somewhat of a welcome

The obligatory introduction post as it were, this is where you get a small insight (god help you) into my brain and my blog. This, is an exercise in understanding my subconscious in a way, but before you run away screaming, I'm not going to be getting all psychological or mathematical. No, that's not my jam. That's simply not me. So, first things first, who am I? Well, on my birth certificate it says I'm Alice Foster. And that's simply who I am. Alice, but I go by many nicknames. 17 years and counting (so close to being legal) and currently hanging around in the limbo that is study leave for the year 13 student. I officially study: english, law and drama and theatre studies, but in each lesson I feel there's a crossover to a different subject, another level of thought. And that is where the foundations for this blog came about.

I, like many other human beings, find myself bored a lot of the time. This is nothing to do with my surroundings, my peers anything like that, it is simply down to the fact that I question everything. And oh my god, it makes it hard for people to be around me sometimes. And so, I thought it was time to stop taking out my questions on my friends and parents and teachers and go through my own way of understanding. I question things, because I find them unfair, or wrong or simply puzzling. I write because I find it is a way of understanding, of conveying my feelings. Sure, I'm never going to write a novel, we can't all be the John Green's of the world, but who wants to be that. The pressure that man is under is insurmountable and I would never be able to have his positive attitude to the world around me. No, simply put, I'm the pessimistic sort. I'm trying to change it, but I find in a world of war, where sex sells, where being intelligent is undervalued compared to the handbag someone wears, it can be hard to see the world in anything other than a place that just sucks. And in that, I find beauty in the dark, in the macabre, but I also find beauty in the superficial, the popular. That ultimately is the world we live in, one where a child's intelligence is balanced out into a series of number and stats. I hate it, truth be told. I would much rather that people talked to that child who struggles to write down, but is full of wonderful ideas, who is magic to be around, but who doesn't know how to put it to paper. But, that simply will never happen. I accept that, I live with it. I deal with it. But I always know that behind that exam grade there is a real person, with real faults and strengths, and that person is never valued as much as they should be.

But, before I turn into a sop, I'm going to stop. This blog will be my diary as it were, the place where my thoughts land on a page and turn into words. Sometimes it'll be sad, sometimes it'll be happy, but that is the beauty of this blog - it's mine, and only mine.

I hope you do enjoy coming along for the ride, and I hope that maybe, just maybe I can finally start to understand myself. But I'm not looking for miracles.

As the big man himself once wrote:
"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more..."