The editor’s picks this week have a general emphasis on the past and the future, which is fitting at the start of any new term.
In his account of personal encounters with the legacy of British colonialism in Canada, Sam Anton encourages us all to ‘re-assess our relationship with the past’. Retrospection and reflection are crucial in moving forward, especially in terms of self-improvement and resolutions. Many of us, myself included,
will have started this month with a mental list of things to change for the year ahead. I told myself I’d get a head start on my summatives, eat more veg and go to sleep earlier. So far, I can’t say this has been massively successful. However, as Katherine notes, it’s also important not to get bogged down in all the negatives of the past. Her article on Human Rights Achievements in 2017 encourages us to remember some of the progress made in the year, and should rightly inspire us all when it comes to moving forward.
One of the most notable steps made in 2017 was the #MeToo campaign, which shed light and brought accountability and retribution to a darker side of Hollywood. This is the reason behind some of the shelved films Katherine Warren covers in her article Shelved: The unreleased projects of 2017/2018.
Turning our attention to the future, Elizabeth Hopper brings to our attention some of the exciting events set to take place this coming year in space travel. I can’t lie- the idea of space has always terrified me. It’s so unimaginably vast that I could never truly comprehend it. To draw a highly reductive but entirely accurate parallel- that’s definitely how I feel looking at the summative essays I have to write this term.
See? Scary!
I know I’ve been here for nearly a year and a half, but this term is my first term at Durham where I’m expected to submit work which actually counts towards my degree! I’m terrified. Luckily, philosophy and religion editor Jason Dougenis has written a rather lovely article giving his top three tips for a successful philosophy essay. As a philosophy student myself, I will 100% be bookmarking this- and regardless of what degree you do, I would suggest giving this a quick read and bearing it in mind with all written work. We may all be ultimately inconsequential beings floating on a rock in the middle of an incomprehensibly vast expanse of space, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t aim to ace our essays, right?
On that rather unconventional existential note, I wish you all a lovely week.
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Happy reading!
