Feeling Inspired

I was on holiday in Mallorca back in September and the hotel I stayed in has entertainment on six out of the seven per nights per week. On Fridays, 'Rubén Memories' performed. During the week that I was there, I felt reluctant to go downstairs, as I had half fallen asleep to the SacconeJolys on my little springy bed. I went down to the bar area to be met by a tall, bald, skinny man, clutching a microphone stand and singing his little heart out. My mum and nana found seats and I sat down, one leg overlapping the other, and I leaned forward, beginning to immerse myself into the show.

Rubén was a fantastic performer. Sure, his singing voice wasn't the best, however his energy radiated across the room and his face lit up every time he received his round of applause following a song. He found little ways to encourage the audience to become involved; singing along with him, shaking their hands and even bringing in some waiters to dance with and to take over their jobs.

He kept repeating the phrase 'God, I love my job'.

This got me thinking.

This is what I want with my life.

This is what I aspire to do.

I don't care what some people I know say, I believe that the most important part of your job (or, for that matter, anything that you do) is to have fun. To enjoy what you're doing. Seeing him beaming as the climax of the song was reached made me tear up with pleasure.

I felt very inspired by him, and I still do today. Whatever I end up doing with my life, whether it be performing (ideally) or anything else, I want to stay sane, creative and, most importantly...

I want to be happy.

- LF, LR and MG
xxx

Accidentally Jealous

Do you ever accidentally feel intensely jealous of another person?

I know this is a strange way of phrasing something, but the term 'accidentally jealous' defines how I'm currently feeling.

Let's just say that a friend of yours is an extremely high achiever. Whether they are naturally clever or not, they always end up with the top results of the class, or even the year group. This person's results have got absolutely nothing to do with you. The results that you achieved were fine, they helped you move onto the next step...so why do you feel bad?

Let's just say that you and a friend are both auditioning for a play. The two of you have roles that you aspire to get, but by the end, your friend gains a fantastic role. You should feel so pleased for this person - great, they've managed to squeeze through such a tricky, competitive competition and gain a brilliant part in the play. Yet there's a huge pang of sorrow in your heart - should you not have got the role?

Let's just say that your friend has a crush on another person within your friendship group. After a few months, they act upon it and become boyfriend and girlfriend. (Or same sex - my example may-or-may-not be based on real life). You are extremely excited for your friends, who have found a whole new happiness in each other and in themselves. But you start to think about the amount of 'friends' that you have liked a little (or a LOT) more than a friend...why did things not end up like that between the two of you?

I like to call this 'accidental jealousy'. Where you know that rationally, you should feel happy for another person, when you actually feel a little bit sad that you are not in the same/similar position.

It has occurred to me recently that this is not a rare thing and, in fact, is quite normal. After all, that  role was made for you, you deserved those As and that boy that you liked should definitely have been into you - like have you seen your reflection??!!

Anyway, I feel like this is okay. It is okay to feel this way. So long as it's only a short while. You need to find away to put those feelings aside, shove them into a box and lock it, so that you can be a pleasure to be around again. You can't necessarily vocalise these feelings as it may come back around and slap you in the face. And you certainly cannot lose confidence over it. So life seems to be going in favour of your friends right now, but your time is coming.

-LF, LR and MG
xxx

Why School is Soul Destroying

I have a lot to hold against school at the moment. I completely understand that it's so important and I'm eternally grateful that I have been given high quality education, however I believe that the school system in the United Kingdom (and most likely elsewhere) are doing something wrong.

On the 13th August, Years 12 and 13 received their grades which either determine a place at university or will shape the predicted grades for universities to see. Obviously there are other options, which I will touch upon later.

To me, it seems as if examiners are purposely failing students. If a student was one or two marks off the higher grade, it felt like they revelled in the student's unhappiness and refused to be slightly more generous. If the exam is entirely subjective, such as English (and in my case, Drama) it appeared as if the examiners remained biased to their own views and gave a lower grade than students deserved.

Whilst I find that incredibly annoying, there is something that is bigger than this that I'd like to focus on. School is ruining the fun of education. I have two personal examples to justify this point...

I have two wonderful psychology teachers who manage somehow to keep my class motivated, educated and their love for the subject shines through them and radiates onto us. One of these teachers appears to stay true to the value 'learning for learning's sake' - studying a subject purely for the love of it. In lessons, she frequently shares genuinely interesting facts, to which she is met with blank facial expressions and the same question is posed:

"Will we need this for the exam?"

Do you see how damaging this is? When you think about it, we're supposed to study the subjects that we love, when soon the love will be replaced by the robotic routine of absorbing information and regurgitating it all over the exam paper. There's no time or brain capacity to learn for enjoyment, which is deeply saddening.

My second example follows the way that my practical AS Drama exam went. Our teacher had told us to 'use the inspiration' of a practitioner and apply it to a script of our choice. My friend discovered an unusual and intriguing script, which we performed to the style of 'Epic Theatre', as developed by Bertold Brecht. No-one else had done anything like that at school. We worked for hours during and after school every week, organised rehearsals out of school and worked solidly at school on this performance.  Both of our teachers helped us with this performance and constantly gave us praise for our work - we were sure that we would get top marks. It took over our lives. At social occasions, my friend and I would vent about how annoyed we were with the others the whole time and we would regularly rehearse our lines (and everyone else's, obviously). We were examined by the moderator, who was also being moderated, and one of our teachers.We performed our hearts out and were proud of it. This was the first time in ages, if not forever, where I felt self-confidence, both in the theatrical world and in real life. 

On the 13th August, we were greeted with a letter 'B' on the report card, rather than the A that we had hoped for. And I know that a B is a great grade, it was just heartbreaking because we expected too much. Our teacher later told us that the chief moderator decided that our performance wasn't "Brechtian" enough. 

Wow.

We were too creative.

Our performance didn't get a high enough grade because we were creative. In a creative subject.

To me, this is not okay. I am not talking about my grade anymore, I am speaking of the fact that students everywhere are having the creativity sucked out of them like a vacuum and then come university and adulthood, when we are allowed a little bit more wriggle room to be inventive, we can't. We have been trained to be machines with cloned brains, not allowed any freedom to be ourselves.

Right, I think I've had a long enough vent! I had been intending to make this post since that eventful day of the 13th August, but I couldn't write it for weeks and then, once I did, my internet was being very temperamental and I eventually forgot about this post. I need to get all of this out there though - not so that everyone can read my problems with school, but so that people can take this and be reminded to maintain their creative energy aside from school. This is why my friends and I created this blog, write poetry, songs and perform.

Thanks for reading,

-LF, LR and MG

xxx

Standing With Ahmed

Every few days I check the news, because I find that it is important to be up to date with whatever is going on in the world. This morning, when I was doing my usual sweep through the Internet in order to be up to date with the world, I was drawn towards two stories that may not seem connected, but to me are deeply rooted in the same plant pot.

In the last twelve hours, the hash tag ⌗IStandWithAhmed has gone viral. This hash tag is a result of a fourteen year old boy being arrested for bringing a home-made clock to school, a clock that a teacher falsely accused of being a bomb. Ahmed was arrested in school and released shortly after, when the police released that it was literally a clock he had made at home because he is a fourteen year old boy pursing mechanics. 

The second thing in the news that has captured the world's attention in the last few weeks is the refugee crisis. When there are hundreds of thousands of human beings crying out in pain, living in conditions that are so far from anything we live in, and enduring the heart-wrenching experiences of fleeing a place that you and your family have called home for hundreds of years, I really ask my self why the world is doing next to nothing. 

I question why countries are closing their borders, and turning away as families are torn apart, mothers are loosing their children and people are loosing their identities. I question why the acceptable response to these tragic events is to sigh and look apathetically at the news reports flooding in of the horrors these people are coming from, their harrowing journeys only to be met with hostility. 

You are probably wondering what the two stories have to do with each other, so I will explain the link that I have made:

The world is focusing on the wrong facts and figures. Instead of stretching out our hands and opening our hearts, we are creating a society where it is acceptable to close our eyes and focus on the wrong things. 

Ahmed Mohamed is a fourteen year old boy, an innocent fourteen year old boy, a talented fourteen year old boy. 

Now tell me what part of that makes you think of a terrorist? Because there must have been something that provoked the teacher into calling the police. 

Oh yes, I know what it is. Ahmed Mohamed was arrested today because he is a Muslim. So really what happened was, a grown adult, someone that should have known better, decided that it was their place to insight their own preconceived prejudices and get an innocent boy arrested because he was a Muslim boy, taking an interest in mechanics. 

But it gets better. It gets better because effectively the world is turning their back on these refugees based on prejudices; based on stereotypes that have one purpose in society, which is to destroy any of the basic humanity that people have. 

I am struggling to put into words how angry and disheartened I feel right now. The world is misplacing its concerns. Western superpowers should be worried about what is actually going on in these middle-eastern countries that is causing such an influx of refugees. 

We should be focusing on trying to fix the root of the problem instead of misplacing our prejudices and stereotypes onto innocent people that need our help and support more than anyone. 

The message Ahmed's school sent to him today is that they have a certain expectation that he will be a terrorist. They show him that they don't see Ahmed for a fourteen year old boy with skills that will change the world, instead they see him as a potential threat because his faith is not the same as theirs. And you know what that says to me? It says that we have not evolved at all. It shows me that white supremacy is just as prevalent now as it was one hundred years ago, and that destroys me, it really does. 

As for the refugee crisis, I really do beg people to open their arms but to also look ahead, look ahead to fix the problem that is not going to stop until a superpower puts it to bed. 

Whilst usually my posts are not this political, I feel so strongly about this, that I could not have passed an opportunity to write about it on this platform. I hope you will stand with us in standing with Ahmed and learn to open your hearts to the refugee crisis. 

-LF, LR and MG xxx

Dear Examiners: My Future Lies In The Details

The best thing about taking exams, is the feeling you have as you get up for the last time, as the person at the front comes round to collect your paper, and dismiss you. The invisible chain that has kept you anchored to your desk for the last two months has been cut off and you are now allowed to do whatever you want, guilt free.

That feeling is a mixture of freedom and relief, but also, it is the knowledge that you have now done everything in your power to make sure that whatever result you get is because you did all you could do. Part of the freedom and relief is knowing that whatever happens next is not up to you anymore.

Although over the summer the impending nausea that surrounds the word 'results' remains, in general, anyone expecting results likes to push the idea out of their minds and dull the scary notion of the future, with the summer.

It is in the days leading up to results day that we begin to re-examine our own performances, making false predictions as to what we have passed or what we have failed. Who we will be disappointing this year, and the many ways in which we will have to make amends to those people. Regardless of how well we suspect we may have done, there is hardly a person in the country that is making positive predictions in an attempt to hopefully far supersede the doubtfully low expectations that you have been subtly trying to work into your parents heads.

Finally the day comes, and you open your results. Staring at the letters that effectively spell out your future. For some people, this moment is filled with relief, you thank your lucky stars that you have met your own requirements along with the ones of your parents, the college, sixth form or university that you want to attend, and spend the rest of the day celebrating.

However, this year in particular, and I'm sure in other years too, there seems to be a large proportion of people that have come out of results day, with more painful consequences. Some people have got grades that they secretly suspected they would but hoped would never actually be true. But some people are genuinely flabbergasted by their results, shocked and disappointed at the view of letters far less satisfactory than the first three of the alphabet.

Faced with the possibility of your future slipping away through your fingers, you try to think of things that you can do to make this whole thing go away. The only thing you can think of is that this must be a mistake.

But what if I told you this actually was a mistake;

This year, I have heard countless tales of people in my year at school and in other schools across the board, who have had their papers remarked, and been regraded totally different grades. I have a friend who was moved up 18 marks, and another who went up 11. This madness is what makes me write this letter in the first places.

Careless examiners are messing with peoples lives.

Not everyone has the money to remark papers, especially not at the ridiculous prices that you are expected to pay for the privilege. I accept that the exam board will reimburse you for the money you lay out initially if the grade changes, but that is irrelevant because these mistakes should not be made in the first place.

What about all the people who decide not to remark because they don't believe their mark will change?
What about all the people who don't have the money to layout and have to go the rest of their lives wondering if their mark could have been something else?
What about all the people who just give up?
What about all the people who lose their university places and end up on a different path than what they were supposed to?
What about all the people who feel as if they have failed, all the heartbreak and stress over a false mark.

My future, and everyone else's lies in the details because when one examiner makes a mistake, it can cost a lot more than £40 per re-mark to fix.

I understand that examiners are humans and humans make mistakes, but at the end of the day these are mistakes that people cannot afford to make.

I hope that people have better luck in the future, and that from now on, examiners will pay attention to the details more than they have been, because that is where the future lies.

-LF, LR and MG

Leaving the Past in the Past

When I lie awake at night, letting my thoughts stir round and round in my head, I know that the only way I can fall asleep is if I write whatever it is down. I sit up, open my laptop and stare at a blank word document, until my fingers tap on my keyboard and within minutes, words appear on the page that spell out exactly what is bothering me.

Every now and again I like to read over what I write in those moments, because I think in some ways what I write then is the most honest, and the purest way that I can gather my thoughts together. For me it is in the silence of the night that the rest of the world is quiet enough for my thoughts to be heard.

Recently when I read over things I had written in my midnight madness, I saw a repetitive theme of the past and so I thought that I would write about it on here, and share some of the advice that I gave myself at some point between one am and four am in the last few weeks.

"Accepting the past is about acknowledging that all the things you have done and all the things you have been through, for the good and bad, are very much a part of who you are. Acceptance is the first part of moving forward and I think that when you have grasped that, you leave yourself with the foundation to build on.

You can take all the things you have learnt and develop yourself into the person that you want to be. It is about recognising that whilst your past will always be a part of who you are, it is not the only thing that you are.

I think the best decision I ever made was to move forward. I think through moving forward I have been able to strengthen the person I am into someone that I know will be able to take the weight of the future.

Thinking about the future is scary, it makes you wonder if you will ever be able to escape, it makes you doubt yourself and your capabilities and whether you will ever be able to truly leave behind your past. but I think that the best way to escape your past is to run into it with open arms.

It is about embracing your mistake, the places where you tripped and fell so that the next time you will know what to do. If you embrace your past then you can use it all to build a future and with your future at the tip of your fingers, you will be able to accomplish anything.

You can't move forward without letting go, and whilst I know letting go is going to be so hard, once you are free to reach out and grab whatever opportunity you are faced with, the past won't seem so troubled anymore.

Instead you will look back and wonder how you made it through the hark times, with nothing to guide you. But you will also know that it was all those things that are very much a part of who you are now. You will know that the reason you carry round a flashlight at all times is so that when you get lost again, you will be able to find you way. You know that when you go swimming, you make sure you jump in with both feet, but wearing a life jacket, so that you can feel the water against your skin without tempting fate and struggling not to drown.

But the best thing about the past is that it gives you lessons for the future, and I think when your past is as clouded as mind, it is the lessons that we extract that will stick with us and shape us for life. It isn't about seeing everything for the bad, it is about taking the bad and turning it into the good."

So I think what midnight me is trying to tell you, is that you need to let go of the past in order to build a future. But letting go of the past doesn't mean forgetting where you came from, or how far you have fought to get here. Letting go means taking with you all the things you have learnt, but leaving behind all the negative associations and memories that you have as well.

I hope this was helpful insight,
LF, LR and MG
xxx

Summer in the City 2015

I was so fortunate again this year, after 2 years of this tradition, to attend 'Summer in the City' - the biggest Youtube convention in London. This time, I went with my best friend Libby (libbyjade26.blogspot.com - her blog is brilliant, you should check it out) and that was it. Just the two of us against the world. She had some internet friends that she knew beforehand, but I didn't know them yet.

The main thing that I have learnt this weekend is that the Youtube community is wonderful. There were people of so many ages with so many differences but one similar interest, and yet it was so easy to become friends with anyone. My favourite thing to do was to look around at everyone around me and just think about how diverse everyone was - tall, short, female, male, transgender, straight, gay, bi, lesbian, musically talented, magicians, gamers, and so many different hair colours! Every single person that I spoke to was so lovely and I'm glad that I have made some new lifelong (hopefully) friends.

Another thing that I realised is how much I love 'smaller' youtubers. By this, I mean like those with less subscribers than I feel like they should have. I would like to mention some of my favourites here, in the hope that you can agree with me or find some new people to subscribe to!

1) Carrie Hope Fletcher, itswaypastmybedtime

Granted that she's not a 'small youtuber', she is also an actress (performing as Eponine in Les Mis) and an author ('All I Know Now' and 'On The Other Side'). When I met her, she was waiting for somebody to pick up her call and, once she saw that we wanted to chat to her, instantly put her phone away and spoke to us for a long time. She gave me great advice, had a laugh with me and made me feel like we were on the same wavelength. I love her so much, she is like my honorary big sister and I feel like, whilst she has recognition for her performances and videos, she needs more recognition for her genuine kind heart, warm nature and friendliness. I am so thankful for her!

2) Dodie Clark, doddleoddle

Let me tell you, Dodie Clark is the most amazing performer. Known for strumming on her lovely ukulele, she has a bubbly personality, bursting with sweetness and excitement. Her videos consistently make me grin and she gives great hugs. Over the weekend, she stood and met so many people whilst also performing, participating in insightful panels (which I was lucky enough to go and watch) and also sold lots of merchandise, which was sadly sold out when I went to pick up the tote bag! At the end of the Sunday, she stood by this fairground ride and did not move until she met every single person who hadn't met her and had a quick chat and a photo with everyone. I respect her so much and my heart weeps when I hear her music (and my eyes, WOW I was bawling during her live performance of 'One for the Road'!)

3) Jenny, thatjennybee

I have only recently discovered this little gem of a channel, containing short, quirky videos about Jenny's life and stuff. I went over for a chat on the Sunday of SitC and we stood for ages whilst she gave me brilliant life advice, we had a laugh together and really cute pictures! Such a genuinely lovely sunshine of a person - I think that's the best way that I can describe her. 

4) Chloe, scarfdemon

Chloe does really amazing things for a charity called 'Save the Children', which is a brilliant charity that does wonderful things. Her short but sweet vlogs are entertaining, educational, enjoyable and heart-warming. Her recent series in which she read diary entries from her younger self was so insightful and whilst it made me chuckle at times, it made me feel better for thinking and acting the way that I did when I was 16. Chloe made a video about Polycystic Ovaries, which is something that I deal with and made me feel like I wasn't alone. When I told Chloe about this blog, she seemed to love the sound of it and even wrote down the address to look at later. That made me squeal!

5) Daniel J Layton, actor

All round hilarious man, Daniel J Layton actor (full name, obviously) is an aspiring west end actor who shares the realities of the industry and also created comedic anecdotes in vlog form. He had a chat with every single person that he met and wasn't weirded out by Libby and I stroking his cardigan. He is so kind, gentle and very funny. His 'Baking with Layton' series makes me laugh until I cry and motivates me to start creating youtube videos purely so that I can feature as a guest in the series.

6) Lucy and Lydia, beauty gurus

These twins are the most beautiful girls that I have ever seen in the flesh. Their make up is always flawless and fashion senses are so good! That's not the most important thing that I wanted to tell you all though. I wanted to explain that they spoke to every single person and had a proper conversation filled with laughter and hugs. Their meet up that I went to was accidental, though they were kept out of that green room for a long time due to not only the amount of people who wanted to meet them, but the engagement that they had with every single viewer. I completely respect these two gorgeous youtubers and bloggers.

I could probably talk about so many more people that I met but I wouldn't want to keep you reading forever! I loved meeting every single person that I spoke to, regardless of how many subscribers they had. Everyone was so kind-hearted and I made so many new friends out of this weekend. If you ever feel like you are sitting on the fence trying to decide whether or not to go to a youtube convention, you should definitely do it! If you go with the mindset of wanting to meet everyone, then you may be met with a huge feeling of disappointment. But going to the panels, watching the mainstage and even meeting other people with the same interests as you are all amazing aspects of the weekend that cannot be missed. 

-LF, LR and MG
xxx