I once told you that you were my favourite teacher. I wish I had told you that more.

I'm heartbroken by your passing. It was a horrible event. But I don't want to focus on the horrible way you died. I want to focus on the absolutely amazing, wonderfully happy way you lived.

When I started at Holt, history did interest me. I've always liked the subject, but I never realised how much until you covered one of my GCSE history lessons. What had recently been a very boring topic on President Hoover suddenly became dramatic and intricate. Your teaching drew me in and it made me want to learn. I was honestly disappointed when the lesson was over.

I remember a few months later going to the A-level open evening and talking to you about the subject. I wanted to do it but I wasn't entirely sure I would enjoy the work. You told me you would be my teacher and that made me sign up for history. You're the reason I took it for A-level, because I knew I would enjoy the next two years of your teaching.

I was always excited when I saw I had a history lesson with you that day. I already loved the Tudors, but your teaching really brought it to life, even when we were talking about farming and economics! You always had a way to make the lesson fun and engaging, whether it was debates, games or challenges. A double lesson on Tudors may not sound like the most exciting thing in the world, but you made it exciting.

After each lesson, I would always come away thinking "wow". I would always tell my family about this new interesting thing that Mr Furlong taught me today. I don't think they always understood why I found it so interesting, but it was.

Then came my EPQ. I know I eventually dropped it because my workload got too much, but the couple months I spent on it with your help were so eye-opening. I remember my topic was the use of propaganda in historical events. You helped me so much to narrow down my topics so that I focussed on key elections throughout British history, some of which I hadn't even considered. I'm sorry I couldn't complete that project. I know that with your help I would have done really well.

Let's be honest, at first my history coursework was a train-wreck. That first draft was terrible. I know you found it surprising when I chose modern history over medieval because I always excelled more at the latter. Despite your doubts at my topic choice, you really helped me understand what it was I wanted to say. After that first draft, you sat with me for two hours, helping me understand where I had gone wrong with language, structure and evidence. I ended up with an B on that coursework. Thank you for helping me that much when you didn't have to. You always helped.

I hope you still have that Henry VIII model sat on your desk that Charlotte and I gave you. We couldn't have passed our exams without you. You were a key factor in me getting into university and I will always thank you for that.

Mr Furlong, you were amazing. I don't think I told you that enough. I don't think any of us did. But I know that you know we all loved you dearly. I have never met anyone from The Holt who ever had a bad word to say about you. Your death will forever leave a hole in our hearts.

You were especially important to members of the LGBTQ+ community at Holt. A lot of girls looked up to you because you were so open about who you were. I know they are feeling a special pain now you're gone.

We always knew you were there for us and that you enjoyed teaching us. You were constantly a friendly face around school and you said hello to every single student you saw. You didn't have to do that. You didn't have to stop during lunch to have conversations with us. But you did, and we all greatly appreciate that.

I feel sorry for all those future Holt girls who will never have the privilege of having you as their teacher. You have changed the lives of so many students. You helped a lot of us find a wonderful passion for history. You aren't like other teachers, you're something much more special.

I sincerely hope that you have found peace, and I send so much love to your family and friends. I can't even comprehend what they must be feeling without you there. You were a light in so many people's lives and you still had so much more to do, so many young minds to still teach, so much more life to have enjoyed.

You will never be forgotten. You have made such a significant impact to so many of us. Our memories will keep you alive for years to come. I promise.

Love, always,
Niamh

I made this as part of my final project for my degree but I thought I should share it here too. I have put a lot of work into this experiment and it has taken me three weeks to put the final product together and I am both relieved and excited about it.

I decided to take this on as I realised a lot of my daily use products were packaged in plastic. So I bought some replacements and documented my week using them and doing everything in my power not to use plastic in my day-to-day life.

​Here are the results:

​
Throughout the week, I found that most of the things that I thought would be difficult to adjust to (such as switching to the new hair products, remembering my coffee cup and water bottle, all the things that weren’t in my regular routine) were really easy after the first couple of days and I was able to adjust quickly.
 
However, the easy things like buying lunch at university or food shopping turned out to be a lot more difficult.
 
In the supermarket I found that almost everything is wrapped in plastic. Yes, you can buy fresh loose fruit and vegetables, but you can’t buy meat not wrapped in plastic – I even tried taking in a box for the meat counter but was told they weren’t allowed to sell it that way.
 
In the student shops and kiosks at university I found that plastic free options were limited to drinks cans and that was about it. You couldn’t even use a reusable coffee cup at the machine because they don’t fit.
 
This is probably due to plastic being a quick and easy product for companies to use. It’s cheap to produce and buy, quick to make, and there is an endless supply. Unfortunately, that makes it very hard for us to help our planet by living plastic free.
 
The big take away that I got from this experiment was yes, it is possible to live plastic-free on a student budget, but you have to be a lot more meticulous about how you live. It isn’t as easy as it should be!
 
But I strongly believe that if enough people start living plastic free, then the demand for reusable and environmentally friendly products will go up, forcing companies to follow that course.

This week was interesting, it was rewarding, and it opened my eyes up to how great plastic-free living can be and I strongly recommend it to everyone!

I've worn the odd crop top in the last couple of years, but they've all been baggy and I always wear high waisted jeans or shorts with them to hide my stomach. This time was different because these dungarees sit on my hips so you can see my body from the side and back all the way down my hips. The top is tight so shows off my curves, which usually doesn't bother me but in this top it does. 

Most of the day I ignored it but whenever I leaned forward in a chair and felt my stomach fold over I would cringe and try to suck in as much as possible. When I was able to ignore it though, I felt confident! I kept saying to myself "I'm doing it! And I look good doing it!". It was empowering. 

I set myself some goals at the beginning of this year. One of them was to get fit. I would tell people that I just wanted to feel healthier, but my actual goal was to get rid of my stomach fat. I've come to realise that I don't need to get rid of it - it's really not that bad and hardly noticeable. However, this insecurity still gets to me. My new goal around this is to just feel confident in my insecurity - to accept it and move on from it. I think I can do that.

Obviously part of this stems from the countless photoshopped images on Instagram, in magazines, on clothing sites, etc. Everyone is put under this societal pressure to be thin and have abs and a big arse and boobs to go with it and it's just impossible! My counsellor says my anxiety takes these images and exaggerates the perfections against my exaggerated flaws when I look at myself in the mirror. I can see that. These factors create this constant insecurity for me around my stomach. But I can change it and make it better. 

For now, I will carry on slowly starting to wear crop tops out and to ease the pressure off my exercise routine for a flat stomach. But no pictures. Not yet. One day, soon. 
​

A lot of aspects in society are built on a funny thing called ‘tradition’. For many things, tradition is the excuse for it existing.
 
“Why do we have a royal family?”. Tradition.
 
“Why do lawyers wear wigs?”. Tradition.
 
“Why do we cook the Christmas turkey on a beer can in the barbecue?”. Tradition – well, my family’s anyway.
 
The point is, tradition leads society and how we act. The word ‘tradition’ is defined as “the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation, or the fact of being passed on this way”. Like the belief that you aren’t doing Christmas properly if you don’t have a tree. Or the custom of bowing or curtsying before royalty as a sign of respect. There’s no particular reason whatever people tell you; it’s just expected because of tradition.
 
Tradition is an important aspect of culture. It shapes different cultures to make them stand out against each other. For example, in China to show respect when you greet someone you bow or nod your head – the lower the bow, the more respect. In India, the traditional greeting is “namaste” which means “I bow to the divine in you”, usually paired with bringing your hands together in front of your chest.

​A lot of traditions are ingrained in the religion of the country. In the UK we celebrate Christmas every year, a tradition of the Christian faith that celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ. In Niger, the Wodaabe tribe observe an annual mating ritual called Guérewol – men dress in elaborate ornamentation and traditional face paint and dance for marriageable women in the tribe.

Why do traditions matter? There’s no real reason for them existing. Someone just turned around one day and decided that we had to do something and that was passed down through generations until it became an assumed part of culture. But we still all observe them, no questions asked.
 
They matter because they are an integral part of being human. Traditions shape our society, our culture and our identity. Whether the tradition is widely observed, or just within your family or group of friends, traditions become a part of you, who you are and what you identify as.
 
For example, my friends from school and I have a movie night every Christmas at my mum’s house, and we all have to wear Christmas jumpers. We watch two or three films (sometimes there’s a theme involved) and then we play Cards Against Humanity. We’ve been doing this for six years now. It’s become a way for us to always see each other and it’s an instilled tradition within our group. When December comes around, the group chat is filled with people asking when the movie night is happening, what we’re going to watch, who’s sleeping over at whose and, in more recent years, who’s willing to drive so everyone else can get pissed. And there’s Secret Santa. It’s our big tradition and we love it.

​The best part of tradition is how we can change and adapt them. Christmas is a tradition, but each family has their own way of doing it, their own traditional Christmas. For my family, that’s various pastries for breakfast as we open our stocking presents, putting on our Christmas jumpers, eating a big Christmas lunch featuring a barbequed turkey followed by opening all of our presents. Then we sit around eating leftovers and chocolate watching whatever Christmas specials are playing (Doctor Who is a must). But it wasn’t always like that. Our traditions have changed as our family has grown.

​Traditions are so important to who we are, and we can change and adapt them as we grow and change ourselves. And that’s what makes them so integral to the human experience.

The world can be a very negative place to be in. I've personally found that it weighs down on me a lot. It sometimes put me in a very depressing and negative headspace when I want to be a positive and happy person. But it proves to be a challenge in everyday life. 

I'm stuck in a routine constantly. I wake up, go to uni (either for a class, meeting or work), come home, eat and go to bed. Sometimes I'll shake it up a bit and go into town (either Harrow or Central London) but I mostly sit at home with Netflix or Amazon Prime on whilst I do work or plan my next radio show. It's very repetitive, week in, week out. 

So I've decided to adopt a new attitude. Today as I walked to uni I looked up to see blue sky peeking out from behind the grey clouds. "The day is getting brighter," I said to myself, "That means it will be sunnier and feel happier." This immediately put a smile on my face. I was walking along in the wind, the sun starting to shine out and my favourite song playing and I found a sense of peace. It's like the opening in a movie was all that ran through my head. For a few minutes it felt beautiful. Then I had to start work and that went away, but oh well.

​A similar thing happened on my way home. A huge gust of wind blew out and pushed my coat back, causing my bag to fall off my shoulder. Usually that would annoy me, but I stopped getting angry and just laughed. That must have looked ridiculous! I thought. And for the second time that day I was smiling walking along the street listening to my new playlist, and I started to fall in love with the world again.

Romanticising your life doesn't have to be a bad thing. It doesn't mean you're hiding away from the realities of life, it just means that you're putting a positive spin on everything, and that at least makes me feel much happier.

I've always found it strange that people see blue as a sad colour. I guess it comes from the romantic poets who always used it to portray how destitute their lives were and how painful their existences were. It's unfortunate that blue got the reputation it did as a cold and depressing colour. 

I love blue. My room back home is blue (only two walls though (mum didn't want it to feel too cold). My bedsheets are blue. I have blue bags and jumpers and plenty of blue clothing. Blue is my favourite colour. It has always filled me with this resounding peacefulness. Blue is my happiest colour.

I don't know how anyone can think poorly of blue. It surrounds us constantly - In the sky, the air and water. It inhabits the entire world. It's the most beautiful colour and it can have so many meanings.

I found a poem a while back by Philippa Lane called Blue and I fell in love with the way she described it:

Blue floats and hovers
it never comes to rest
its scent is distant bonfires
its touch moth-breath

Blue is man-child
with spiritual eyes
a stranger in a room
who isn't one
soft down on upper lip
felt without touch

it is dreaming at night
of what is not and cannot be
it is gauze-vision
half-reality

it is a shaky signature
on a typewritten page
seen through mist

Blue is pain that is borne alone

it is quena music
bone-notes quavering over absent flesh
in death worship

yawns are for want of blue
and partially for having it

Blue is pigeons
and siamese cats
and snow shadows
it is for ever
stretching

it is ten billion spindles
weaving blue fabric endlessly

it is the certain
uncertainty

The way Lane shapes the colour blue is so reflective of everything I think and feel from it, the happiness I have always associated with it.

​Maybe it's just me.

Okay this may seem a bit random, but it annoyed me so STRAP IN KIDS.

I ordered a dead sea mud face mask and some silicon mask brushes on Amazon. Two small items. From the same place. To arrive on the same day. So, in my head, I thought that they would arrive both in the same medium sized box or in two smaller packages.

But NO.

Instead I get a large box and a large plastic envelope. The face mask took up a small corner of the box and was in its own packaging. The brushes took up about an eighth of the envelope.

See down in the bottom left hand corner? That's what I bought. The rest of the photo is PACKAGING.

Granted, Most of that can be recycled. But recycling isn't always the solution. Things can be "theoretically recyclable" (Prospect magazine) but whether or not it actually goes through the recycling depends on how big or small the object is. For example, shredded paper can't be recycled because it falls through the machine. It can be recycled as long as there is somewhere to sort it and someone to buy it. If one or both of those things don't exist in your area, it gets chucked in the landfill with everything else. Which is the one thing recycling is trying to avoid.

Recycling isn't always going to help the situation. We need to cut down on packaging, otherwise items like this that aren't bought up will be discarded into landfill, putting this planet in a worse situation every day. And that's just sad.

Whilst meeting my personal tutor today, he brought up a very interesting question - what is news? Is there a clear definition? Of course, as new Journalism students, we gave the general answers one would expect; news was communication of information to feed curiosity. My tutor agreed that that was a very good answer. However, he said, there was a very good definition by British Journalist Harold Evans (editor to the Sunday Times who uncovered the Thalidomide scandal) who simply said that news could be defined in three words:

I found this quite powerful. The reason we read news is because everything in the news affects us as people, whether directly or not. For example, we are interested in the events of Hurricane Harvey and Irma because it is affecting a group of people extremely badly, even though it has no direct affect on us. In the same way, someone would be interested in a news story about developments in cancer research because the illness has affected someone in their family, therefore having a direct impact on them. We consume all this media because it is about us. 

In this modern social age of over-sharing, we all want to know what everyone is doing all the time. The fact that the media will always target people by being about people only feeds all this curiosity that we all have - this keeps the media thriving, feeding curious appetites for information all over the world. News is suddenly running our lives - our thoughts, our opinions, our actions - and we can't get enough. News is us as a world population, and our consumption of it gives it the power to become us. News is people.

I haven't posted in a long time, almost a year in fact. A lot has happened in that time, I finished my A Levels and am now at University. But I've had a horrible few months because of mental health, so I'm going to talk about it quickly and get it all out in the open. Mental health isn't talked about enough and the stigma needs to end.

I actually wrote about this back in 2015 in a post titled 'A Little Self-Help' which you can find here. At the time I wrote that, I was unaware that I had anxiety and did not fully understand what I was going through. I hope in this post to reflect on that and tell you about how I have progressed since then.

In my post I mentioned that I was feeling unhappy and was unsure how to make myself happy again. What I didn't realise is that I had stress-induced anxiety. Unfortunately, nobody had helped me to understand this problem and just put it down as exam stress and nerves, which I believed at the time. It wasn't until I went to see a doctor about another medical problem I was experiencing that I was actually formally diagnosed with this anxiety, as she believed that it was the root cause of my other medical issue. That's when I finally began to understand my issues throughout Year 11 - the panic attacks made sense, the unhappiness made sense. However, as I believed it was just a temporary thing that I experienced in my exam time I didn't reach out for help anywhere. That was probably the worst decision I could have made. the best time to learn how to deal with an issue is to tackle it head-on when the problem has begun, but because signs of mental illness aren't covered at schools and considered a 'taboo' subject people never realise they have a problem until it is too late. This is then followed by a gradual build up to where you would then need heavy psychiatric help. which is what I ended up getting.

I started Year 12 with some feelings of anxiety and mostly bottled them up until I could have a 'dedicated cry time' once a week. It was still affecting me, but not as badly as before. I took up Reflexology, which was quite helpful, and I also tried practising Mindfulness, which works until you get out of practice! I got out of practice at the beginning of Year 13 when suddenly all of my worries about exams and University suddenly rushed forwards. I was too busy for exercises, at least that's what I told myself, and suddenly all my hard work into stopping my problems collapsed.

In the Spring term, the anxiety started to get worse as coursework deadlines drew closer. The English department screwed up my coursework and then I had to push my history coursework back because of it. On top of this I was trying to study for my exams in summer. Any time I felt anxious I pushed it away, pretending that it didn't exist. Again, not my best decision. At that point I should have definitely thought about reaching out to someone, but it never crossed my mind as something important. I had coursework and exams to focus on and everyone seemed much further ahead than I did in my studies.

Summer term was my downfall. The day before I was supposed to go back to school, I broke down. For the next two weeks I only went to lessons for two days and stayed at home a lot because I couldn't face school. I suddenly realised that I needed help. A lot of it. I registered with the NHS Talking Therapies and within a week I had had a review on the phone with one of their specialists and was signed up to a program called Silvercloud in the Space from Panic course. That program was amazing. I was able to work through all of these exercises to help tackle anxiety and panic attacks at my own pace and every two weeks I did a survey about how I was feeling and had a phone conversation with a dedicated therapist. This was amazing. I can definitely handle myself a lot better now. I ended up being released from the program early because of how well I was doing. My exams were made a lot easier by this and I have access to that program for another year until I am completely signed off. I wish I knew about the service sooner so that I could separate and compartmentalise my worries and thoughts about my anxiety. A lot more people should sign up for this as it is free and there isn't a very long waiting list. If people knew about it in the early days of their illness as I believe it would have helped save a lot of people a lot of torment.

Anxiety isn't pretty. No mental illness is, and the worst part is that you always feel lost and alone whilst you are suffering -  I know I did. If we talk about mental illness more then everyone will feel less alone whilst tackling these problems.

Having a mental illness doesn't make you less of a person. In fact I believe it makes you stronger than anyone else because of the torment your mind goes through. Just remember to get help.