By Alistair Trapnell I was browsing the internet during a bout of procrastination and came across the term optimal anxiety. That can’t be right, I thought. I’ve always considered anxiety a negative emotion to either suffer through, suppress, or avoid entirely. How can even the slightest ounce of anxiety be considered good for you? Well, … Continue reading Is Optimal Anxiety Real and Can It Help Me?
By Marina Sano CW: Racism, discussions of hate crimesI came of age in the 2010s – so I’m old enough to have seen my cultural background transition from being ‘weird’ and something I felt I had to hide, to all of a sudden being trendy. But when East Asians are attacked in the streets, the … Continue reading Matcha Do About Anti-Asian Hate
Amelia Joy discusses 2000s pop culture, nostalgia, and how we treated female celebrities. Has the conversation changed since?
By Jing Xuan Teo The thing about growing up in Singapore is that despite being majority POC, we love white people. Maybe it’s the fact that there’s just not that many of them (rarity = want, its basic economics), or maybe it’s the fact that our leaders have entirely forgiven the British for colonial rule, … Continue reading On Internalized Racism and Speaking “Good” English
Musings of a Third Culture Kid By Piri Altraide ‘How come you moved around so much? Were your parents diplomats?’ It’s Christmas Day, 2020. My body feels warm, despite the tame weather, most likely because of the red I’d had with lunch and the humidity. I’m at an ‘orphans’ Christmas in Footscray hosted by my … Continue reading Belonging Everywhere and Nowhere
By Charlotte Armstrong Sifting through Facebook’s ads is no longer like mining for gold, but rather finding yourself at a buffet being served things you never said you liked or wanted, and now your plate is suddenly overflowing. Like most bad ideas, it started late at night. Scrolling absently through my Facebook feed, I … Continue reading The Soft Toy Scam: A Facebook Fraud?
Ethan Patrick on getting around University of Melbourne Carpark. Photo by AbsolutVision on Unsplash ‘Getting around here is going to be a struggle’. This was my first thought when I saw Melbourne University's massive Parkville campus. As a young person with a disability, I was coming from a relatively small high school and had little … Continue reading Things I learned along the way: Studying with a disability
Greta Lukavic worked in a grocery store throughout Melbourne's Coronavirus lockdown As Melburnians dive into summer and bandy about phrases like ‘the new normal’, it’s worth sparing a thought for those of us who are suffering a bout of post-COVID-19 fatigue. I'm talking about the variety of fatigue that manifests as a kind of emotional … Continue reading A Shout-out to Those Still Suffering from Post-COVID-19 Fatigue
I wish Grattan Street Press had been in existence when I gained my first job at a publishing house. Let me explain . . . I was one of the very first graduates of the new Master of Publishing and Communications at the University of Melbourne in 2003. There were only a few practical editing … Continue reading Things I Wish I’d Learned Before I Became a Fiction Editor
Driving was seen as a huge deal when I was growing up in the UK. For my sister, who got her licence at seventeen, driving was a crucial part of her fledging independence from the family home. My brother picked his licence up later in life, at the age of 25, once he realised it … Continue reading On (Not) Learning to Drive, Gender, and Failure
