With school forcing me to write paragraph after paragraph, Google Docs has become a close companion of mine. Although a reliable and loyal one, Docs is also quite annoying, especially in its habit of reverting back to “Arial”, every single time I start something new.

So, instead of Arial, the boring rip-off of Helvetica, I propose to change the default Docs font to Times New Roman. Already favoured by English teachers and students alike, this classic font is bold, formal and easy to read. Unlike Arial, each letter is clearly distinguished, with no longer introducing confusion between uppercase “I”, and lowercase “l”, since there are distinct markings in the “I” and “l” respectively. .

Also, Arial is aggressive on the eyes. While Times New Roman is bolder than EB Garamond, it still remains elegant. On the other hand, Arial is dark and appears to be an attempt at modernity, which fails and instead settles for mediocrity. The uniform and chunky lines of each letter are an eyesore– the words muddle and blur. It reminds me of over-highlighting; when you highlight everything, nothing stands out. However, Times New Roman has beautiful varying lines, helping the letters flow when read. The capital “N” demonstrates this very well; the thicker middle line forces your attention to slide downwards, helping the transition between uppercase and lowercase become smoother.

Lastly, Times New Roman is already extremely popular. Personally, I did a survey asking “Is Arial a good default font?”, and 56% of the responses were to the negative. Some replied with font suggestions, most commonly Times New Roman, and Spectral; these two are similar, since they follow the “newspaper” style. Times New Roman is also the fourth most searched for font¹, therefore if Times New Roman is so well-liked, why shouldn’t it be the automatic Docs font? Clear and classic, Times New Roman leaves a formal impact, an important characteristic for most writing, leaving readers and writers both content.

In conclusion, Arial, a font so decidedly bland it’s almost required to be changed, shouldn’t be the default font. Times New Roman is a crowd pleaser, with enough character to prevent it from being soulless, but not enough for it to become overwhelming.

So, when you begin the next dreaded English assignment, remember to change the font. You may sacrifice an extra minute, but I assure you, it’s worth it. Discard the dull Arial, and instead change it to something that’s simply better.

Reality TV defies true reality.

An everyday citizen rapidly flying over and crawling under challenging obstacles to victory, under a time crunch. A homecook creating impeccable food and reaching its culinary dream in under 60 minutes. Housewives in extravagant homes dishing about glamour and wealth, while wearing the latest styles in the ideal body. These are the clips that we see when we search up “reality TV”. But the truth is, reality TV defies reality. Real people wearing real clothes with real problems are not real enough for reality TV.

According to a survey conducted by the Mental Health Foundation, nearly 1 in 4 people experience a negative impact from reality TV on body image. This is linked to cases of severe anxiety, depression and feelings of shame. Reality TV paints an image of perfection that exacerbates the insecurities of predominantly young audiences.

What audiences see on screen is an ideology for a perfect body that is generally unrealistic, largely uniform, and lacks opportunity for diversity. In fact, when directors cast people into these TV shows, they often find the unique and prettiest people in order to attract attention and gain views. Everything from what these people wear, to even what they say gets twisted around to cause more conflict and get more attention.

Audiences watch reality TV shows thinking that the shows are a reflection of a “normal” existence. However, reality TV presents the complete opposite. It normalizes abnormal lives, portraying everyday life as boring and undesirable. But reality TV is not real. A TV producer called Michelle Crouch says that “[reality TV shows] have writers who craft plot lines, twisting and tweaking footage to create conflict and shape up a story.”

I am not asking for much. All I want is empathy. All I want is for show producers to acknowledge the impact it has on viewers. All I want is a change in the reality TV industry.

What if the prince of the story wasn’t all charming as they make him out to be? What if the princess was taught lies and thought that violence means love? Society has grown up with the idea that if a boy is being mean to you, that means he must like you. Through time, I’ve grown to notice how screwed up this view is. Especially if this is being taught to younger kids.

Children grew up with a heavy influence from their parents. During these stages, they learn boundaries and rules that lead them into the future. Though what happens to those parents who still apply a lens of good and bad when it comes to showing feelings?

Emotions are often grouped in different ways with feelings such as anger and sadness are seen as bad while happiness is held on a high pedestal. We’re praised for being anything but sad which leaves our so-called negative emotions scrambling for a spot in the world. In which case, they’re heavily stigmatized.

If a man cries they’re seen as weak. If a woman is loud they’re unlady like and won’t be able to secure themselves a husband. People adjust themselves to meet standards that are simply blown out of proportion and in the process, repress their emotions and what makes them a person.

If the prince was really as kind as they say, then why does he use violence as an answer for everything? Maybe he grew up not being able to freely let his so-called negative feelings out and instead, chose a mechanism instead. But what if he had been able to? Teaching young kids that bullying equals love only promotes abusive relationships in the future and with added pressure to fit perfect molds, these types of reasonings can only end in disaster.

The prince isn’t supposed to abuse the princess and the princess deserves more of a happy ending than what was promised. Even with how deeply-rooted these things are, perhaps one day we’ll see the end to the saying “boys will be boys”.

My voice hasn’t always been low. Throughout the years, I’ve gone from a would-be valley girl to speaking with the teen-girl linguistic phenomenon called the vocal fry.

From teenage speaking norms, valley girls, and the Kardashians’ telltale voice, women have always been under fire for the way they talk. As a 2014 study concluded, “although vocal fry, whether used by men or women, [was] judged more negatively than a normal speaking tone, women were particularly seen to be “less competent, less educated, less trustworthy, less attractive, and less hireable”.

This must mean vocal fries are unattractive, right?

“[The] guttural fluttering of the vocal cords,” as Douglas Quenqua states, was actually seen to be “use[d] [by] [women]…as power tools for building relationships” according to Carmen Fought, a professor of linguistics at Pitzer College in Claremont, California. Although women are so often regarded as weaker, vulnerable or downright stupid for introducing and pioneering slang and vocal innovation, there are reasons suggesting why women might be more attuned to social cues, often triggering an onset of linguistic features. Some possible reasons include a higher sensitivity to social interactions, using language as a means to break pass societal stereotypes defining females as docile, demure and proper, or understanding the increased margin of acceptance when speaking extravagantly and with extra embellishments and distinctive qualities.

However, despite all the hate women get for employing vocal fries, based on a study of 18- to 22-year-olds, “researchers at Centenary College of Louisiana found that young men not only fry, but they do so more than young women, [as] [m]en typically have lower overall pitch than women…so their voices descend into fry more easily”. The “unappealing nature” of a vocal fry has become a way to discredit women in the labour market, blaming any implicit bias on the just-so-happened-to-be unalluring sound of the female’s natural voice.

Still unsure about the misogyny that has arisen over female linguistic qualities? As stated by a friendly comment under a 1-minute compilation of Kim Kardashian vocal frying, “what is the attraction of a woman sounding like a frog?”

Whether it is the natural diction of an individual’s speaking style, or the intonation, pitch, and verbal qualities employed, learning to respect, appreciate, and accept, is the bare minimum.

Like, totally.

It’s that time of year again. The dreaded report card season. Everyone is restless, trying to chuck in the last of their late assessments, preparing for the disappointment of that one bad grade. But what fogs my mind the most is that suffocating fear of failure that lives in the shadow of the ideal student image others have somehow sculpted to resemble me.

Fear of failure often comes hand-in-hand with being an overachiever… but not for me! I’m more like the opposite of an overachiever. I have a bad habit of leaving my assignments for last minute and settling for “good enough” when something could be “great”. I can’t seem to figure out if that’s necessarily good or bad because it prevents me from crossing the line to being a perfectionist, but it leaves me in a constant loop of hoping that this pattern of: low effort → good results, miraculously continues for the next assignment. And when that does happen again, there’s this imposter syndrome that sits in the back of my mind whispering to me that my marks weren’t deserved, that the teacher just likes me, or that I just got lucky, or maybe they were mixed up with someone else's marks; because there’s no way that something I didn’t put any thought into could be good enough.

On the other hand, when I don’t get good results, I can just tell myself, “Pshh! It’s ok, it’s just because I didn’t put effort into this assignment. If I did put in the work I would have totally gotten a good mark”. But sometimes I think, maybe the lack of effort in these assignments aren’t as severe as I tell myself they are. Because even as I’m fumbling around my ideas and making typos left and right just trying to have something to hand in, somewhere in my subconsciousness sits the strive to make it deserving of good marks. And maybe when I get marks back that aren’t as good as I expected, under all that confidence that “I would have gotten a good mark with effort” there’s a little part of me that feels disappointed.

So perhaps I am a little bit of an overachiever. No, I think “overachiever” isn’t the right way to put it. I just have a fear of failing when I put in 100%, so I limit myself to 50%. But maybe I’m just convincing myself that these assignments are all low effort so when the marks come back bad I can say, “I barely put any effort into this” and when they come back good I can say, “I barely put any effort into this!”