Fri, 03 Jul 2026 05:12:12 +1200WeeblyFri, 26 Jun 2026 00:12:30 GMThttps://www.francescomptonlibrary.com/blog-body/the-education-we-take-for-granted-by-hannah-liuWhat if going to school wasn’t a guarantee?

Have you ever imagined waking up and simply…not having to come to school?
With students like yourselves dealing with academic pressure, sleepless nights and hard work not paying off, this seems like a dream come true. Honestly, who wouldn’t enjoy having all this load off their shoulders?

This is where people completely misunderstand this idea. Education isn’t supposed to be a burden, it is a privilege. While every morning we drag ourselves out of bed, complain about homework or deadlines, hundreds and thousands of girls around the world don’t even have the chance to sit in a classroom. Around 122 million girls are out of school globally, held back by poverty, child marriage and gender norms. They wake up everyday carrying the pain in their heart, knowing that they are unfortunately destined to have different futures than their brothers.

Although sometimes school can be stressful, it is one of the most powerful foundations we’ve ever been given. Education isn’t just about writing essays or memorising equations, it shapes who we become. It builds identity. It builds potential. It teaches young people to think for themselves, to question the world around them and to form strong perspectives. When you consider today’s young people (Gen Z and Gen Alpha), it is vital for them to have solid education. In a rapidly evolving AI-driven world, they need critical thinking, digital literacy and adaptability. For many girls in Afghanistan, this is what they’re wishing for on every birthday candle.

Today, Afghanistan stands out as the only country in the world where secondary and higher education is strictly forbidden to girls and women. According to the United Nations, nearly 2.2 million Afghan girls are barred from attending school beyond the primary level since the Taliban regained power in 2021. Sadly, it is not just Afghanistan that faces this problem, it is a global crisis. South Sudan, the world’s newest country gaining independence in 2011, ¾ of girls do not even make it to primary school. In Niger, 1/10 of girls attend secondary school with child marriages, early pregnancies and poverty pushing many out long before they have a chance to learn. Ethiopia,⅖ girls are married before the age of 18. Burkina Faso, 1% of girls finish secondary school. Liberia, ⅔ of primary-age pupils out of school. Think of it this way, all these girls have been denied the opportunity to live a simple life just like yours.

All the smart women that could have become doctors, engineers, and writers are not allowed to achieve their dream any longer. These poor girls have just as much ambition, just as much determination and drive to attend school and learn. Imagine being on a bridge and it leads to all your hopes and dreams in life on the other side. However as you excitedly walk across, the whole bridge just shatters and there is a huge gap between where you are and the other side. There is no way to get across, and unfortunately, you have no choice but to start walking back to where you came from.
As a young girl myself, having the opportunity to learn freely, I cannot imagine waking up each morning knowing that my education is taken away from me. I always strive for excellence and try my best in everything I am given because I know I should not take anything for granted. I think about my own family members in the past who had to work from a young age to support their households, who never had the chance to sit at a desk. Their stories remind me that the opportunities today were never guaranteed for them, and are still not for millions of girls around the world.

“There are two powers in the world; one is the sword and the other is a pen. There is a third power stronger than both, that of women.” – Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban.
As you may know, Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani education activist and the youngest ever Nobel Prize laureate, is living proof of her own words. This is why girls' education must be acknowledged as more than just a routine part of life. It is a privilege. A privilege that too many girls are denied from. When a girl is kept out of school, it is not just her future which is limited, it is her independence, her voice, her safety and her ability to shape her own life.

Tomorrow morning, I’ll complain about my alarm, rush to school and sit down in class doing assessments. Somewhere else, another girl my age will wake up wishing she had that same opportunity. The difference between us isn’t talent, ambition or potential, it is simply just access. What feels ordinary to us could change the life of someone else.

​Hannah Liu
​Year 11
]]>Fri, 26 Jun 2026 00:07:24 GMThttps://www.francescomptonlibrary.com/blog-body/the-tanoa-by-latoya-frueanA boarder filled her Tanoa with all her comforts.
She poured her holy water in there,
she placed a cross on the rim
and scattered portraits of her family
as her foundation and support.

She poured inside her ava powder,
placed a soaked and softened Siapo on the side.
Bbeside the Tanoa she placed
things that made up home,
the cooled chapel on a hot day,
open houses with floors made of wood
and the red pa’ave and yellow blouse.
Things that reminded her of Samoa,
She placed those in there too.

Sounds of laughter, sounds of the river,
the sound of joy
and her heritage:
Christianity, her service to the community, her respect,
her mother tongue and her family.
She poured them all into her Tanoa.

Those she grew up with,
those who came along her journey,
those she valued and
those she didn’t value as much,
she placed them in there too.

The static noise of Radio Samoa in the morning,
cakes made of mud and
pretend houses made from sticks and leaves
that was her childhood.

She placed in her Tanoa,
day in and day out, wanting to fly home,
The early Sunday services and feasts
and the ‘āiga she would spend it with.

The never ending taste of salt that grazed her lips
and sat on her tongue
She placed her tears in there too and lastly,

she placed a framed note in her Tanoa,
“E lele le toloa ae ma’au i le vai”,
“The wild duck flies far but always returns to the water,
It stayed strong despite the scratches on the exterior of the bowl.

Her Tanoa became the only reminder of home.
Not once did it complain about the weight of burdens.


Latoya Fruean
​Year 12 ENWN]]>Thu, 25 Jun 2026 23:26:57 GMThttps://www.francescomptonlibrary.com/blog-body/looksmaxxing-the-peak-of-toxic-masculinity-by-chelsea-wang“Comparison is the thief of joy.” I don’t know about you, but I have definitely looked at myself one too many times in the mirror. Like that big fat boulder from Indiana Jones, comparison will keep chasing until you're eventually crushed. Now cue “Looksmaxxing”, the online practice of “maximising” one’s physical appearance. Sounds promising right? Well, no. When it goes so far to the extent of snorting cocaine and hammering jawlines, it seems more like a cult than a community. Looksmaxxing not only harms those practising it, but also young teenagers who are heavily influenced by this media.

I spend eight hours on social media everyday. It’s not good. I tell myself, “I’m not addicted!”, but I think that’s what all addicts say. However my time spent scrolling has shown me that you genuinely cannot miss a single day on the internet. I don’t explicitly remember my first encounter with this cultural phenomenon. I do remember seeing videos pop up on my feed of random people asking how to “improve” their looks. To me they all just looked like… people. Looksmaxxing, an internet subculture, rose to popularity around 2022. Unfortunately for me and you its virality has only rocketed. The Cadogan Clinic associates it with features such as a highly defined jawline, a neutral to positive canthal tilt, and mandibular growth. Understand any of those terms? It’s okay, me neither. Most of these sound like terms you’d hear while falling asleep in science, but these are genuine problems that “looksmaxxers” (as they call themselves), worry about.

If you went back a few years, you’d find that Looksmaxxing was very different. I present to you: a reddit thread from 2021. There’s advice on hair, clothes, skincare…shoot, I might have to use these! Looksmaxxing unfortunately has evolved (or devolved!) into undergoing extreme routines for the sake of going from a three to a seven. Guess men got bored of objectifying women so they turned to themselves. Okay, let’s play America’s favourite game: ‘Guess That Fake!’. I’m going to list the routine of a looksmaxxer interviewed by BBC. You tell me which parts are fake. We have: working out, skincare, growth hormones, pushing index fingers against temples, and scanning his face on an app to rate his looks. Are you ready? Well trick question, they’re all true! You know…I just wake up, brush my teeth, eat and sleep but that’s cool too I guess. This routine surprisingly isn’t as bad as the others online, but as the wise Dr Michael Mronzinki, a sports physician said: "It might have started as 'here's my gym routine, here's my skincare routine, but now it's turned into 'Here's how I make my cheekbones bigger – by smashing them with a hammer.'"

You might think this is ridiculous (I do too), and you’re probably wondering if people even watch this stuff. But there is no one that loves these creators more than… teenage boys! Think about it. Teenage boys with the pressure of being “manly” see these older men who look the standard. They want to copy their ways to achieve the same result. The men’s mental health charity Movember shows that almost two thirds of males aged 16-25 regularly watch and read masculinity influencer content. When this context is constantly exposed to them, it is very easy to understand why they are influenced to try these methods for themselves. Trust me. As an older sister, I’ve seen the effects firsthand. Coconut water has stocked our fridge. Gym equipment has littered rooms. It’s bad. Medical News Today shows that 46% of young people use social media for at least three hours per day which may link to lower self-esteem. I think it's not harmful to try to slim your face or work out. It’s cosmetic surgery, doing cocaine, and physically hurting yourself that is — and to an audience of primarily minors too! Jeez, where are their morals? This encourages an unhealthy mentality that young boys need to look like men who one: have gone through puberty and two: whose bodies are much more suitable to taking drugs compared to a scrawny little boy.

Seeing your once cute baby grow up to be a reserved, rude teenager is exactly the growth of looksmaxxing. The Guardian called it “a mathematical problem to be solved with tools”. The New York Times openly degraded it multiple times. I’m not against trying to improve yourself, but this toxic community praises people who have reached their full potential and humiliates those who are trying. So, if you ever catch anyone — whether it’s a brother, boyfriend or even yourself consider slamming a hammer across your face, I urge you to stop before you end up swelling like a balloon.

Chelsea Wang
Year 12 ENWN]]>Thu, 25 Jun 2026 23:22:32 GMThttps://www.francescomptonlibrary.com/blog-body/is-hustle-culture-destroying-the-next-generation-by-danica-sperathWe spend our days in boxes. In cubicles, classrooms, desks, offices and bedrooms. Stuck into routines that make life feel meaningless. Often feeling trapped by superficial social and academic obligations, like you’ve been strapped onto a treadmill at birth and forced to run down a path you've never wanted. Many students seem to break under the immense academic pressures to be perfect.. being graded on ability to memorise rather than ability to understand. Are we forgetting the reason we go to school? To learn. Everyday, we’re surrounded by never ending ‘unspoken rules’, expectations, and jealousy that makes us afraid to live, and regardless of the amount of times tables we’ve learnt, we still don’t know how to escape them!

Hustle culture believes more work equals more success. And while this can be true, improving productivity and motivation, what benefits can you get from draining yourself that you can’t get elsewhere?

It’s no shocker that this hustle mindset is huge in high school. Universities have ever-lower acceptance rates, and now that the minimum to even have a chance is perfection.. acceptance into university sounds like a fever dream. In an age of constant online comparison, numbers of mental health issues in teens continue rising higher too. In 2024, over half of all New Zealanders ages 15-24 experience anxiety or depression, and numbers of young people with moderate to high distress have nearly doubled since 2016. What are we to do when we need help? As much as we all love doomscrolling, taking advice from influencers and fake medical professionals won’t help us whatsoever. Even though a quarter of rangatahi experience high mental health needs, the percentage who cannot access support when they need it has risen by 77%. What are we doing?! We can see teens in Aotearoa are struggling, getting crushed by the pressure of perfection. Academic pressure is just one of the things crushing us. But can we see any end in sight?

Let me ask: How many hours do you spend on your phone each day?
I spend maybe three hours (okay maybe a bit more), but online comparison still sometimes makes me feel like a total failure.
I see videos about “14 hour study days”, StudywithKate’s “study marathons,” and "GCSE results day” tiktoks and you probably do too. So what if I decide I'll spend every waking moment studying, neglecting myself and shutting everyone out, because more work equals more success…right? But what do we do when we don’t have any motivation left? Are teenagers able to stay strong under this pressure?

Well… no. I wouldn’t say so.

In a study from the United States, over 90% of 9-12th Grade students reported that they get an inadequate number of hours of sleep on most school nights. Some students reported coping strategies such as taking sleeping pills, smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol to help them sleep. If hustle culture is depriving teenagers of sleep, and leading them to habits that destroy their body physically and mentally, do you think that this is the school system best developing the leaders of tomorrow or demoralising them today?

We know that global rates of diagnosed mental illness and psychological distress have surged in recent years - anxiety and depression lead the crisis. When humans start to break, we’re told it's a personal problem. But we aren't glowsticks. ‘Breaking’ us doesn’t make us work harder! What if anxiety, burn out, depression and dissociation are just our minds sending alarm bells, reacting exactly how they should to a life that's completely unnatural, controlled, and oppressive? Why is it that we are always told to manage these symptoms rather than question the system causing them?

Humans are social creatures. But hustle culture is destroying our sense of community. If we don't have that, what do we have? We prioritize getting better grades than our peers than getting to know them as people, and are so terrified of someone beating us, that we can't help anyone out if there isn’t something in it for us! If just being alive takes a village, why are we burning our bridges to give ourselves motivation to run faster?

I believe that hustle culture has alienated us, destroyed our sense of community, and is adding to a long term mental health crisis, but all we are getting are ways to reduce these effects, instead of ways to stop the root problem.

In Krishnamurti's words, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” But we’ve known this ‘sick society’ since we learnt our ABC’s. Do we love the hustle and bustle of life because it’s good for us, or because we don’t know how to escape the box?

Danica Sperath
Year 12 ENWN]]>Thu, 25 Jun 2026 23:16:10 GMThttps://www.francescomptonlibrary.com/blog-body/mind-your-language-by-samantha-mutu-griggGrowing up I didn’t notice it. ‘Mankind’ felt like it included me, and ‘you guys’ was a neutral term for groups of people - I used them without thinking. It was normal. I often didn’t use words like chairman and mail carrier over chairman and mailman, it was just an inconvenience to change. It still meant the same thing, why bother? It’s just words - It’s not that deep.

It wasn’t until I started to pay attention, to really pay attention. It wasn’t until I saw how women are treated, and became educated on the oppression of women historically, and in our current society that I saw that it is, in fact, that deep - it’s always that deep.

Language is not something that is neutral. It never has been. The English language, my mother tongue, the language I speak everyday was built and shaped by men, who [only] viewed men as the default, and the norm. Women were the exception. The language treats women as if they are an anomaly, as inessential, yet it treats men as the essential subject and the standard of humanity, an idea Simone de Beauvoir called ‘the other’ or ‘othering’ in her famous book The Second Sex. The othering of women is incredibly prevalent in the English language, but if you aren’t listening, if you aren’t watching you’ll never catch it. You’ll never understand and you’ll never mind your language.

Man up, Businessman and even Freshman, these words place Masculinity as universal. Femininity is the deviation from this. Femininity is to exist separately from normality. When a woman comes out of medical school, she’s a Female Doctor, but when a man does the same thing he’s just a Doctor. We add a modifier for the women. We must announce her womanhood and femininity because we are saying to ourselves: she’s not the default.

We don’t just place men as the neutral in boardrooms, it’s also in the bedroom.
We need to talk about sex. When a man sleeps with ten people, we call him a Stud, a Player or even a Legend. But when a woman does the same thing, what do we call her? A slut, a whore or ran through. It’s the same act. Different judgement. While one gains status, the other loses humanity. The verbs we use about sex also expose the sexism in the English language. Smash, hit and tap - these are not mutual acts. These are things one person, the man, does to another person. The penetrator, men, have the active role, while the passivity belongs to the person being acted upon, which in our culture and society, is the woman. Our language teaches us that women do not have sex, instead, they are had.

Far too often, we are dismissive. Dismissal protects. It protects that language and the violence and struggles which stem from it. I’ve seen it in real time, I’ve seen it unfold. On Tiktok, X, Instagram and nearly every social media platform: online misogyny doesn’t begin with violence. It begins with vocabulary. Terms like Femoid, Foid, and Bop strip women of humanity and individuality. It turns them into categories, into objects. Meme culture will tell you this is irony, but when it’s repeated a thousand times over it stops being irony and becomes normality.

Then normal becomes ‘But she was asking for it’. The Manosphere didn’t create our tolerance and dismissal. Andrew Tate, and later, Clavicular, only had to find a microphone to amplify the language we already allowed. Alpha Male, Beta, Looksmaxxing. Every word that we absorb without question is another barrier stopping us, holding women down.
So, what do we do?

True Feminism isn’t simply believing that men and women are equal - the philosophy and the idea are the easy part. Real feminism is speaking up. It’s saying people or humankind over mankind. It’s calling out misogynistic and sexist language. It’s refusing to laugh at the joke that was never funny. It’s hearing smash and replying with ‘Smash what, exactly?’

We are not helpless. Things change because we change it. Language changes because we change it. Giving women the right to vote felt otherworldly 150 years ago, but now our opinions on democracy cannot exist without it. That’s what happens when we decide not only that we need change, but to make it, when we decide to be the change we want to see.
​
The oppression of women survives and thrives because its language feels almost invisible. Let’s make it seen. Be annoying about it! Be dramatic, be sensitive, be loud.
Before its violence, its language. Women are actively being oppressed through the way we, as a society, speak and communicate, so I urge you to mind your language.

By Samantha Mutu-Grigg
​Year 12 ENWN]]>Thu, 25 Jun 2026 23:14:51 GMThttps://www.francescomptonlibrary.com/blog-body/my-skin-enters-the-room-before-i-doThe air conditioner in the ballet studio always found the open wounds first. Cold air slid against the raw skin on my arms and shoulders, stinging so sharply that I had to resist the urge to scratch at them again. The previous night, I had clawed at my skin in my sleep until thin red lines stretched across my body like hundreds of paper cuts. Again. In ballet, bodies are impossible to hide.

The girls around me stood gracefully in their tights and neat buns, their movements effortless and elegant beneath the harsh studio lights. I stood among them with my arms crossed tightly, my hands hidden under my elbows. Nobody ever directly asked me, "Is it contagious?" yet somehow I always felt they had already answered that question. During partner exercises, the other girls had already formed their groups, huddling together in clusters, piggybacking one another jokingly across the studio and linking arms between routines. I remained slightly apart from them. Maybe none of it was intentional. Maybe I only imagined the distance because I had already become so aware of my own skin. Still, the feeling followed me everywhere.

I remember rushing into class late one afternoon, my ballet slippers scraping awkwardly against the vinyl flooring as I hurried into position beside everyone else. One girl looked at me in a way I have never forgotten. Her eyes travelled slowly from my hands to my arms, pausing at the dry patches, the cuts, the scars that had faded and returned over and over again across my skin. She never said anything aloud, but she did not need to. Her expression said enough. I knew what people saw when they looked at me: your skin is disgusting.

"You should wear something longer," my mum once told me. "No one wants to see those wounds. They look too gory."

By that point, I did not even feel upset anymore, only tired. Tired of covering myself up in the middle of summer, tired of pretending I was not in pain (which I never really managed to do), tired of feeling like my body was something shameful that needed to remain hidden from other people. Eczema is not just a physical ailment. It is an invisible, continuous battle with both the skin and the mind. People imagine it as a minor inconvenience, something that can simply be solved with moisturiser and enough self-control not to itch. What they do not understand is that it slowly changes the way you exist around other people. It changes the way you dress, the way you move, the way you think about your own body. Eventually, you begin to feel as though your skin enters the room before you do.

When I was younger, my best friend had eczema too. Knowing someone else carried the same struggles as me made me feel less alone. We joked about how painful hand sanitiser felt on our broken skin and compared which creams burned less when we applied them to fresh wounds. There was comfort in being understood without needing to explain myself. But as we got older, her eczema slowly disappeared while mine stayed exactly the same. Her hands became soft and smooth, free from the wrinkles and fissures that we once both had. Meanwhile, my own skin was still trapped in the same endless cycle of healing and then splitting apart again. Sometimes the pain became unbearable. At school, there were days when I could barely hold a pencil properly because even gripping it hurt.

No one can truly understand what living with eczema feels like, not even other people who have it themselves. There is a spectrum of experiences. Some people carry it in small patches hidden beneath sleeves, while others wear it visibly across their entire body. Some people only experience it occasionally before it fades away with enough cream and care.

I do not think my condition made me stronger. People like to say things like that about suffering because it makes the pain sound meaningful and easier to accept. The truth is that it made me self-conscious, exhausted, and painfully aware of my own body in ways that other people may never fully understand. But it also forced me to understand something about human nature very early in life. People react strongly to visible differences. They stare at them, avoid them, misunderstand them, or desperately try not to acknowledge them at all.

Even now, when cold air brushes against my skin, I still imagine myself standing in that ballet studio, the bright lights reflecting against the mirrors, the neat rows of girls standing gracefully beside me, and the feeling of wanting to disappear inside my own body. More than anything, it has taught me what it feels like to be seen too quickly, before anyone has truly taken the time to know who you are beneath the surface of your skin.
​
By Rosamond Lin
Year 12]]>Wed, 24 Jun 2026 03:12:30 GMThttps://www.francescomptonlibrary.com/blog-body/the-camera-is-the-ordinary-really-ordinary-by-hebe-hanWhat is the most powerful part of social influencers? Not makeup tutorials, not skincare routines, nor those food vlog videos, showing portions so tiny and delicate as laboratory samples. Their real ability is to convince people that being ordinary is a flaw and even a failure.
Imagine this: Now it is 11:45 p.m, and you are lying in bed, telling yourself to just scroll on TikTok for five minutes to relax. Three hours later, you have been completely defeated by a seventeen year old girl. In her vlog, she wakes up at five in the morning, drinks chlorophyll water, writes a diary under the beige light, goes to Pilates, eats avocado toast that looks AI generated, and labels her entire lifestyle as a “healing girl era”. Meanwhile, you sit on the bed wearing a hoodie that hasn’t been washed for three days, clutching a box of cookies, looking like a homeless person.
Then suddenly, you start to feel that your entire life is a failure, falling into the endless regret in this endless night. Perhaps, this is the most powerful part of social influencers.
In the past, we used to compare ourselves with celebrities, but that never felt completely absurd and outrageous. After all, celebrities lived in Hollywood mansions, wore precious diamond jewelries, and dressed in fancy gowns that are probably more expensive than our salary. That distance actually kept us grounded. Now, a person of your age can tell you in front of the camera, “actually, you can have such a life too.” She smiles as if she has just been kissed by the sunlight, her room looks as clean as an IKEA model room, and even the tone of her speech has been rehearsed in advance. Then you look down at the instant noodles on your desk and the clothes that haven’t been folded for a week. Suddenly, you feel that your life is like a summer afternoon rain, damp and filled with the lingering smell of dirt.
According to the Pew Research Center, 48% of teenagers believe that social media has a negative impact on people of their age group, but this number was only 32% in 2022. Even more terrifying is that 45% of teens think they spend “too much time” on social media. Everyone was scrolling while feeling anxious and kept scrolling…… In addition, according to the American Psychological Association, reducing social media usage by 50% in just a few weeks can significantly improve teenager’s satisfaction with their appearance and body. That is to say, many people’s insecurity did not appear out of nowhere; it is more like being gradually fed up by the “social trends”.
Sadly, this anxiety is not even as intense as an exam. Instead, it is more like chronic poisoning. You won’t suddenly break down, but you will start to feel: your face is not delicate enough. My life is not productive enough. My room is not comfortable and aesthetically pleasing. Even drinking bubble tea has a sense of guilt like “should I order Americano instead?”
Imagine this. You took a selfie. It’s actually quite normal and good. The lighting is perfect and you haven’t picked the wrong top. But you still spent thirty minutes editing it, putting it through an industrial production life of smoothing, brightening and reshaping. In the end, you never upload it at all. Not because the photo is ugly, but because you think: “ Will others think I’m pretty enough?” This is no longer about confidence. This is a digital survival instinct.
The most ironic aspect of the current influencer culture is that it always pretends to be “encouraging you to love yourself.” But in fact, what it relies on is constantly reminding you: you are not good enough. Because if everyone is truly satisfied with themselves, then who will buy that bottle of essence that gives you flawless skin anyways? Even more absurdly, nowadays relaxing has become a competition. In the past, when people were tired, they simply lay down and rested. Now, when people are exhausted, they first set up their phones and film a GRWM( get ready with me). Taking a bath, candles, face masks, soft jazz in the background… It seems that if you don’t edit your breakdown into a montage, your metal state is not considered advanced.
But is this still life? Since when did it seem that we have been performing to be alive? So we begin to fear “ordinariness”. An ordinary face, ordinary grades, and ordinary life. However, most people in the world are just ordinary people. Not everyone needs to go jogging at five in the morning, read a hundred pages of books every day, drink green avocado smoothies, manage three different careers, while maintaining a stable mood. Since when did we need to constantly “update” ourselves?
Perhaps, the most successful aspect of social influencers is that they make the entire generation feel that rest is laziness, ordinary is failure, and “not living life like a movie” is a problem that needs to be fixed. So the next time when you start to doubt yourself late at night because of someone who lives in Beverly hills and makes money by shooting Vlogs, remember one thing: you have not failed. You just haven’t lived your life as advertising something.
]]>Wed, 24 Jun 2026 01:37:45 GMThttps://www.francescomptonlibrary.com/blog-body/-chrysanthemum-tea-by-jackie-xu菊花茶 (Chrysanthemum Tea) 
To my grandparents, tea was a bridge. Yet to me, it was a wall. Staring at the muddy water in the porcelain cup, steam rose in ghostly tendrils. As it attempted to strip away my appetite, I pushed it aside, longing for the bright fizz of the Coke bottle. Every restaurant, every meal, the tea returned. Each time, more stubborn than ever before. 

“Why can’t we order Fanta or Coke like other families instead of this earthy tea?” I asked my mom one family dinner. 

“你以后就明白了。” she replied.
 
I sat back in my chair, sulking at the rest of the restaurant. I mean how could anyone like this confusing drink that does not seem to be liquid or solid? Every time you took a sip out of the cup, your mouth was either attacked by the boiling water or your mouth would fill with mysterious floating bits with names you would only know if you existed during the Qing Dynasty. 

The tea leaves floated aimlessly in my cup, unsettled and confused. 

Confused like my journey in Chongqing. For two days, my family perilously hiked up a snowy mountain three hours away from the city, a so-called “life-changing experience” at the top. I went through slips, tumbles, sweat and tears. When we finally reached our destination, I was greeted with three incense sticks and a golden statue. Watching everyone around me kneel down in the snow, bow their heads three times and lift the sticks up high. The smoke stung my eyes.I forced back a cough in the eerie silence and still I had no idea who I was praying to and why. 

Confused like the afternoons my grandma tried to teach me calligraphy. Pressing the brush into her palm, guiding it over the rice paper, her strokes were deliberate and smooth. For her, each flick of her wrist seemed to carry centuries of discipline and beauty. For me, it seemed just like black ink bleeding over the page, across the table and down my shirt until I came to my senses and it really was. No matter how hard and how focused I was, the characters only gave me a cold stare, so much like the tea leaves in the cup. 

Nonetheless, my grandma’s 67th rolled around the corner. Sitting at the table, her soft eyes filled with knowledge and wisdom, flattered as everyone glazed her for her masterpiece. We did not have the typical cake, pizza, sugar but instead, the table was crowded with shared plates of 拆魚豆腐羹, 饺子, 春卷, 糖醋排骨, and 炒饭. Dishes as familiar as family itself. The bowls, plates and chopsticks were set out perfectly around the table, with seats a bit too close but cosy. The kitchen was alive with activity as my grandma rushed from one end to the other, checking on the pots and pans that sang with flavour and aroma.

Just before I could finish appreciating each item crafted to perfection, out came our relentless nemesis, who had been locked away in the furthest corner of the cabinet all this time…chrysanthemum tea. But it was my grandma’s birthday so I took the risk. As the yellow tentacles of the flower reached for my throat, I fought to swallow them. I looked to my left. My little sister had her chopsticks in one fist, her spoon in the other. She attacked the flowers with all emotions, ripping apart the leaves, pushing them aside, only for them to casually float back. To my right though, my grandparents cupped the 盖碗 in their wrinkled hands, drawing the tea to their lips with ease. 

Years went by, and still, every family meal began not with food, but with the ritual of tea, the unfamiliar language I still could not speak. With time, something seemed to shift. The tea was never just bitterness. If I lingered long enough, there was a faint sweetness, a warmth that clung to the back of my throat. 

The moment came one evening, when I watched my grandpa’s hands steady the teapot. His fingers, worn and trembling, still poured with care. His reading glasses slowly fogged up as the steam wrapped around his face. Around the table, no one spoke. The silence was gentle, stitched together by steam rising from porcelain cups. I understood then: tea was less about the taste than about the presence, about the quiet thread binding us together. 

As we passed the cups around, instead of reacting with disgust, I held it with acceptance. I drank, not for the flavour, but for the belonging. Every sip I tasted continuity - my grandpa made, my parents refilled, and me, I learnt to serve. Serve not to exchange for 红包. 
Serve not to earn jade bracelets. 
But serve to connect and to respect. 

Yesterday my sister asked me why she could not just have Sprite. 

“你以后就明白了。” I replied. 

Glossary: 
你以后就明白了 - You will eventually understand. 
盖碗 - Gaiwan 
拆魚豆腐羹 - milky white fish and tofu soup 
饺子 - dumplings 
春卷 - spring rolls 
糖醋排骨 - sweet and sour pork ribs 
炒饭 - fried rice 
红包 - red envelope

​
Jackie Xu
Y11 ENWN 2025​]]>Fri, 19 Jun 2026 03:09:58 GMThttps://www.francescomptonlibrary.com/blog-body/sgcnzida-gaskin-shakespeare-essay-competition-winner-eassin-wangDrama derives itself from conflict, and a universal conflict has always been that between the desire of the individual and the aims of the collective. Many of Shakespeare’s plays achieve their drama from such conflict and the question of whether individual agency can endure in the face of external pressures from the collective. The drama itself is resolved when the collective triumphs over the individual, or when both forces come to a state where they can coexist. Shakespeare’s tragedies tend to be resolved by the former, while his comedies are resolved by the latter. This essay will examine Antony and Cleopatra and Measure for Measure and the way in which the conflict between the individual and the collective is presented in each. 

It is easy to discern the tragic and comedic natures of these two plays. In Antony and Cleopatra, Antony’s personal desire to be with Cleopatra comes into conflict with the aims of the state of Rome, which require him to fulfil his duties and serve the country as a powerful general. Early in the play, he neglects his responsibilities because of his infatuation with her, leading his soldiers to criticise him, saying that he has been transformed from one of the “triple pillar[s] of the world” into a “strumpet’s fool” (1.1.13-14). Similarly, Octavius censures Antony for “giv[ing] his empire/Up to a whore” (3.6.75-76), condemning him for how he has relinquished political power for love. The play ends in tragedy as his individual desire is extinguished by the aims of the state; Antony is seen as a traitor to Rome for Egypt and is driven to suicide after multiple military defeats at the hands of Octavius. The external pressure of the state ultimately overwhelms his individual desire. Thus, there is a tragic end to the play as these two forces are unable to be reconciled, leading to the destruction of the individual and the annihilation of his desires. 

In Measure for Measure, Isabella’s personal desire to preserve her chastity also comes into conflict with the aims of her family; her brother Claudio’s wish to survive; and the laws of the state dictating that Claudio must be executed for committing fornication. When Isabella pleads with the acting regent of Vienna, Angelo, for her brother, he gives her the ultimatum that he will pardon Claudio if she agrees to sleep with him. In a time when it was believed that committing such a sin would damn her soul to hell and as a woman about to become a nun, Isabella firmly refuses, stating that she’d rather wear the “impression of keen whips” as “rubies” before she yields her “body up to shame.” (2.4.108-111) In response to Claudio’s plea for her to sacrifice her virginity to save him, she calls him a “faithless coward” (3.1.152) for wanting to “take life” (3.1.154) from her shame. As the play progresses though, Isabella preserves her chastity, and Claudio is saved from execution due the Duke of Vienna’s manoeuvring, who arranges for Angelo to be tricked into sleeping with his spurned fiancée Mariana thinking that she is Isabella, deceives him into thinking Claudio has been executed, and punishes Angelo for his draconian rule of Vienna and his hypocrisy. Thus, Isabella’s personal desires come into balance with the aims of her family and the state; the tension between the individual and the collective is resolved and the play draws to a happy close.

However, under more careful scrutinisation, it can be seen that agency was never granted to Isabella from the beginning, thus nullifying the conflict between her personal desire and the aims of her family and the state. While Isabella seems to have agency in her conviction to remain chaste, all of the events of the play are laid bare to the audience as being entirely due to the machinations of the Duke. He leaves Vienna in the hands of Angelo, who is known for his “stricture and firm abstinence” (1.3.13) at a time when the city is overrun with licentiousness because of his own lenience. He intends for Angelo to punish his unruly citizens, “who may, in the ambush of [his] name, strike home” with the Duke’s “nature never in the fight” (1.3.44-46), allowing him to achieve his goals without his name being slandered. The rest of the play, including the help he gives to Isabella and Mariana in tricking Angelo, and his final punishment of Angelo, are only the means to his goal of asserting the law in Vienna without sullying his own reputation. In the final scene, the Duke proposes marriage to Isabella; “...for your lovely sake,/Give me your hand and say you will be mine.” (5.1.549-550) Isabella remains silent; the narrative does not grant her the opportunity to convey her thoughts. When Isabella’s personal desire becomes a cog in the wheel of the Duke’s plan to use Angelo to restore order to Vienna while simultaneously using Angelo as a punishable scapegoat to preserve his reputation, and when her autonomy to give a response to the Duke’s proposal, the conflict between the individual and the collective becomes void: Isabella was never allowed autonomy in the face of the machinations of the state represented by the Duke.

In contrast, Antony is granted agency to assert his personal desire against the aims of the state, despite his failure to triumph over the collective. When Cleopatra deserts with her ships at the Battle of Actium, he “claps on his sea-wing and, like a doting mallard/Leaving the fight in height, flies after her” (3.10.24-25), abandoning a battle that was otherwise favourable for him. He admits that he is “made weak by [his] affection” (3.11,73), yet chooses his love for Cleopatra over what his duty to Rome; saying that her “beck might from the bidding of the gods/Command [him]” (3.11.64-65). Antony’s own decision to commit suicide is primarily motivated by the fact that he incorrectly believes Cleopatra has died, even when he previously resolved to kill her for what he thought was her betrayal, stating that life “is torture” (4.14.57) with her gone and imploring her to wait for him so that they may walk “hand in hand” (4.14.62) in the underworld. While he ultimately fails, Antony’s decision to uphold his personal desire in the face of the aims and pressures of his state proves the existence of his agency and substantiates the conflict between the individual and the collective in this play. 

Indeed, many of Shakespeare’s plays derive their drama from the conflict between the desires of the individual and the collective and the attempt of the individual to assert their agency against the pressures from a collective. The tragic or comedic nature of a play unfolds from how this conflict is resolved; the tragedy closes with a triumph of the collective over the individual, while these two opposing forces are reconciled in a comedy. However, while the struggle of an individual to contend his own will against the collective is clearly tangible in a tragedy, the reconciliation of the individual and the collective in a comedy may be brought about by the nullifying of individual desire so that it is in accordance with the aims of the collective; thus making the conflict between these two forces redundant, leading to a conclusion that is indeed “comic”, but perhaps artificial and contrived.

​]]>Fri, 12 Jun 2026 03:09:39 GMThttps://www.francescomptonlibrary.com/blog-body/does-kahunui-improve-academic-successDoes Kahunui improve academic success?
 
St Cuthberts College offers a one month long, off-the-grid, transformative outdoors education camp for Year 10 students in the Waiotahi Valley. Girls are separated into nine intakes, all leaving throughout different times of the year. Each girl experiences being completely disconnected from electronic devices, communal living, the outdoors, and building close friendships with other girls in their year. Students live in houses of eight, where they are all responsible for cleaning, cooking, and managing their daily routines. Kahunui’s purpose is to build resilience, independence, and interpersonal skills through outdoor education. 

There’s a noticeable feeling every month when the Year 10 intakes return home from Kahunui. Within a week, teachers begin noticing and saying the same thing: “They’re different. There’s been a shift.” Kahunui is marketed as an outdoor education programme at St Cuthberts College, not as an academic programme. Despite this, according to research conducted at the University of Otago, the month-long experience has been essential in reshaping young girls’ identities, equipping them with confidence and key learning behaviours that continue long after they return to school. Kahunui may truly be one of the most academically progressive programmes at St Cuthberts, despite it not appearing academic at all. 

Kahunui isn’t just a camp that’s thrown together with fun and rogaine maps. It is a purposefully designed education strategy. Kahunui’s key focus is on developing perseverance and resilience. This is made clear by the research conducted at the University of Otago. Kahunui builds on girls’ strengths and challenges stereotypical gender expectations. Staff at both Kahunui and St Cuthbert’s have reported “significantly altered social dynamics” when girls return to school, affecting their attitude towards learning. Academic success relies not just on intelligence, but also on confidence, independence and resilience. Every educator will tell you this. Kahunui isn’t deviating from learning, it is the foundation of it. 

Girls develop an increase in self-belief, improved problem solving and critical thinking skills, greater independence, and strong relationship and collaboration skills. These are indicators of academic accomplishment that schools spend years trying to develop in workshops and assemblies, yet nothing truly parallels the impact of Kahunui,. When girls return from Kahunui, teachers observe that they participate more, take greater academic risks, and manage themselves effectively. They also show an increased amount of eagerness and willingness to learn and attempt difficult tasks. This directly influences learning behaviors once back at school. One hundred percent of Year 10 girls at St Cuthbert’s complete Kahunui. This means that this academic strategy benefits every student in that year's level, not just the sport focussed girls or the girls who love the outdoors, but everyone. In a school that is focused on academic achievement and progression, Kahunui enhances the intangible qualities that make measurable achievement and performance possible.

A girl I interviewed, Emily Smith said she  “realised she was capable of more than she thought,” a sentiment shared among many girls who have attended Kahunui over the years. Another spoke about learning to trust herself, which is a skill that no exam can measure, yet all learning requires. Anyone who has been to Kahunui understands the experience of cooking dinner and burning half of it, or panicking after getting lost while leading a group of girls to their campsite for the night. In those moments, fear turns into questions. “What do I do now?” and“How can I fix this?” These are the moments when every girl realises that she can do more than she ever believed. 

The memories made at Kahunui are all lessons. The girl who climbed a track she initially believed she could not complete can later approach an algebra maths internal she was nervous about. A girl who has made a fire for the first time, now is not afraid of putting her hand up in class. Every girl who has attended Kahunui now is not afraid of trying, and even possibly failing. It is the perseverance built at Kahunui that shapes her and pushes her forward.
 
Kahunui does not  improve academic performance because girls learn how to kayak or set up a tent. It establishes academic success because girls learn who they are. Once a girl believes she is capable, resilient, and independent, she becomes unstoppable! After living this reality for 28 days, no classroom experience can take it away. Kahunui does not teach trigonometry,  it teaches the courage to attempt it. 
 
Written by Jane-Sophia Mailangi
Year 11 English and Writing for Publication




 
 
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