Poem: To Simba with love

To Simba with love.

So many years it’s been since you stole my heart,

Picked us, your chosen, your set apart,

The ones in whom you placed your hope,

For a brighter brand-new start.

Interview Survival Guide: top tips for extroverts

Written for LinkedIn: view the original here.

You might think that an extrovert would feel a lot more at home in an interview setting. The caricature of the sociable, talkative soul who is energised and enthused by interaction with others, might at first seem the perfect fit in a situation where, as we are constantly reminded, you have to sell yourself. But not so fast!

Attacking our top universities for being elitist solves absolutely nothing

I do not usually speak or write about my days as a student at Cambridge university. For one thing, it all feels like a lifetime ago.

For another, I’m not likely to be the one who brings it up in conversation. People’s reactions to it make me feel awkward.

But there is a third reason: attendance at a top university is, perversely, becoming an increasingly maligned achievement, with the fine universities of Oxford and Cambridge, together with London’s finest universities and a handful of other Russell Group names frequently being blasted for elitism. Oxbridge gets it worst of all.

Your 1950s housewife will not thank you for her hash tag

BBC News today featured a short film about the #TradWives movement: ‘Submitting to my husband like it's 1959': Why I became a #TradWife.’

The film features an extraordinarily tedious woman named Alena Kate Pettitt, who crows dreamily on about her life as a housewife, looking back with nostalgic fondness to a traditional England that once was, and explaining how, having grown up with a single mother herself, she rebelled and wanted a man to take care of her and to live as a housewife.

My challenge to Christians this year is this: have a holy and thoroughly worldly Christmas

A post in one of the Christian Facebook groups I belong to really got my back up this week. It read thus: “Jesus gave us Good Friday. The world gives us Black Friday. Take your pick!” That quote could easily be substituted with these words: “The Bible gives us the Christ child. The world gives us Santa. Take your pick!”

Poem: A trip on the tube

When you hop on to the tube, what plays upon your mind?

Is there something to be glad about, or only ills to find?

Can we take the gloomy view and leave it all behind,

And train our thoughts on things unseen, and a world that seems more kind?

More students are studying Spanish than French, but which should you learn?

This is the first year that Spanish has overtaken French as the most popular A-level language. As uptake of French fell by 4.1% (8,355 entries), Spanish rose by 4.5% (8,625 entries).

I have studied both languages, French through the formal route in school, and Spanish in my own time. Learning a language is no small commitment. We learned our own mother tongues through a process of memorisation, refinement and correction that we weren’t even conscious of, and we essentially have to force ourselves to do the same thing again. Yet it can be thoroughly rewarding too. If you are thinking that French or Spanish might be for you, here’s my personal take on the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Noah and the great flood: the story of an evil god?

A friend of mine, firm and devout in her Christian faith, asked my view on a tricky moral dilemma, relating to the biblical story of Noah and the great flood.

I found the question so fascinating, and indeed hard to answer myself, that I’ve decided I would rather share it, and the answers I’ve come up with, for anyone interested in Christianity, or simply debates and arguments about religion.