Keeping Up With Juliette

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Recently, I've been watching a lot of Russel Brand's content on YouTube because rather surprisingly, he uploads videos giving some pretty sound life advice which I have been genuinely trying my best to follow as much as possible. I say surprising because before discovering his YouTube channel, with all due respect I never knew Russel beyond the actor that he once was, but upon discovering his channel, I have come to realise that Russel is not just an authentic and relatable human being, he is also an individual who perhaps has the intellect of some of the greatest philosophers to have ever lived. So I follow his advice very dearly. And one of the topics that Russel often talks about is living in the present moment. Last year, on this blog, I wrote a post called "Working towards the next day," which was my advice to my audience on how we can use the present moment to stay positive during the height of the pandemic...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Personally, I find it crazy that this time next year, I will be on a completely different journey to the one that I'm currently on now. Although I don't currently know where exactly I will be and what my destination will look like, I know that I'm trying my very best to figure it out and I know that my efforts will eventually lead me to something good.  However, recently you may have noticed that I've found the process of discovering what I want to do, quite difficult. I think that I've mostly found it difficult because I'm finding that I'm being influenced by so many different people, I'm beginning to feel that my own aspirations are being lost in the conflict.  Some people genuinely want to go to university because they believe that it will give them the necessary qualifications for their chosen career or field of study.  Some people genuinely want to go to university because they believe that it ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Recently, I watched series 1 of Tiny Pretty Things. It's a Netflix series that is centred around ballet and dance, and it also stars Brennan Clost who played Daniel on the Next Step, my favourite TV show growing up. Tiny Pretty Things  first aired last year and since then, I have heard a lot of people talking about it so I thought that I would give it a go and provide you with my very own review.  To give you guys a brief synopsis of the plot, in the series one of the dancers called Cassie from the ballet academy in Chicago (where the series is set), gets pushed off of the roof of the academy by an unknown attacker. Although she survives this attack, Cassie is found in coma inside the hospital, with doctors unsure as to whether she will survive. Due to Cassie's condition, she gets replaced in the company by another dancer called Neveah. No one in the company initially welcomes Neveah as they all feel intimidated by h...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  First, we began with three...And then there were two... Unfortunately, on Monday evening, one of our dear little chickens Roast, was captured and taken by Mr Fox, who had been patrolling the field just outside our garden for quite some time now. I was sitting in my room when my sister called out to me saying that she heard a scuffle in the garden. When we finally ran down to the patio to see what was going on, Sunday was up on the picnic table and Parsnip was pacing up and down the patio, the two of them squarking towards the hedges. Clearly Mr Fox had paid them a visit, spooked the chickens, and taken Roast. At first, we were not entirely sure if Roast was attacked or if she ran away in a fright so me, my sister, and my dad walked up and down the garden and across the field to see if she was there. My dad even walked down the field to one of our neighbour's gardens (the chickens favourite place to escape during the day) to se...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Last Sunday, I went into town with my friend to have some lunch and hang out. Oddly enough, although I have made many trips out into town by bus with my sister, this was the first time that I'd actually taken the bus into Cambridge by myself. You might think that this is a bit late for me, but with Covid preventing me from taking the bus into college last year, I haven't gotten much practise. However, in the end, last Sunday I was able to take the 11:20 am City 8 bus into town and I survived! For half of the journey, I sat on the top part of the bus next to a young girl and her mum. The girl was making me do Tik Tok dances with her which was rather awkward but I'm glad that I was able to meet some new people on my travels. For the last half of the journey, I sat on the top front of the bus, basking in the sunshine until the bus eventually stopped at the station. It took me a while to get my bearings and figure out whic...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  I was reading an article on the news recently about the new Texas Abortion Law that came into place on the 1st of September of this year. This new law stated that Texas abortion firms will not be allowed to carry out abortions on women who are 6 weeks into their pregnancy. On May 19th of this year, the Texas Heartbeat Act was signed which allowed the Texas Abortion Law to be put in place. The Texas Heartbeat Act stated that once doctors could detect a fetal heartbeat (about 6 weeks into a woman's pregnancy) abortion was not allowed to be carried out.  The introduction of this law was received with much annoyance by many women in America and other countries, and this is very much a sentiment that I uphold myself. I have heard many stories of women discovering that they were in fact pregnant a few months into their pregnancy. Although I agree that there should be a cut off point for when abortions can happen because for som...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  If 5 years time began today, where do I hope that I would be? This was a question that I was asked in tutor time at school recently and it was a question that I struggled to answer. When I was younger, I'd  always pride myself on my ambitious attitude towards life and my decisiveness towards the career paths I wished of having. If I wanted to be an author,  I would read as many books as possible and write whenever I could. If I wanted to be a dancer, I would go to as many dance classes as possible and move as much as I could. In a much simpler time of my life, I would always have an ambition and a way of somehow getting there in my head. However, I've found that when it comes down to actually making the decision about where I want to go and how I want to get there, like I am doing now, I get cold feet about the future. Very soon, I will be undertaking some virtual open days at some universities and I'm finding the wh...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Despite what people have made it out to be, dance is probably one of the most inclusive art forms out there. As you all probably already know, I am going to be starting up my Zoom dance classes again very soon and recently, I have been thinking a lot about what I would like to bring to my own dance classes that's new. After thinking it over, I have come to the conclusion that I would like to make my classes more inclusive and more enjoyable to a wider range of people. In my personal opinion, I think that some people have forgotten what the true meaning of dance is. Nowadays, dance has become more about the technique, the competition, the commercial world, and the fame and less about the performance, the originality, the enjoyability, and the socialisation. A lot of people in the dance world have forgotten that at the heart of some of the oldest forms of dance, people were trying to bring the community together and were not try...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  As I'm sure many of you already know, over the summer I have been working on my extended essay, as well as my IAs. I did my extended essay on how the mainstream media (Strictly Come Dancing + Dancing with the Stars) has influenced the younger generation of dancers and this was a 4,000 word essay. As well as this, I was also working on my history and nature of science IAs over the summer and I'm here to give you an update. So far, although they are far from perfect (believe me😂🤦‍♀️), I have still managed to complete all of my essays for the summer. This just sounds crazy to me because, as I'd mentioned before the holidays, I really did feel intimidated by all of the work that I had in front of me and I did not want to do it at all. I thought that although I write often and although I'm fairly organised, this essay writing would be an impossible task for me that I would struggle to complete. I'm not denying tha...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Although there has always been a notion that we should endeavour to look after each other, collective responsibility has arguably never been talked about as much as it has been talked about in today's modern society. As an individual, I recognise the importance of helping others who are in need of being helped because I understand that not everyone was born into the same privileged circumstances that I was fortunate enough to have been born into. Hence why, although I admit that I'm not the world's best charity-giver, I have perhaps taken up the job that I have of being a support worker and helping those families with Down's Syndrome relatives who are in need of help. Not only is it a highly rewarding experience, I find that it is also an excellent way to give back to the community. However, I have also recently grappled with the notion in my mind that collective responsibility is in some ways still predicated on p...