School & Career

Vet Against The Odds

Hello! My name is Lauren, I’m 22 and I’m at university training to be a vet. Like most vet students I like science and animals, what makes me a bit different is that I am partially deaf in both ears. I wanted to write about what it’s like to go to university and move away from home when you can’t hear properly.

My parents found out I was deaf when I was 5 years old, just after I started school. My sister is also hearing impaired and Mum had inadvertently taught us both to speak properly, which meant that doctors didn’t realize there was anything wrong. When I got older mum told me that she was really worried at the time that being deaf would affect what I was able to do in life, but so far it hasn’t.

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Home, Health & Style

What is Procrastination, and Do You Have Time to Read This Right Now?

I’ve been trying to write this article for a while, but, well. I mean, I’ve had the time, but there just seems to be so much else to do. Like rearranging my books or the clothes in my wardrobe into colour order. And yesterday, I just had to plait all the tassels on my blanket and look through all my old photo albums.

Sound familiar? Procrastination is the science, no, the art of doing trivial things whilst putting off something important, like doing your homework or, ahem, writing an article. But putting things off for too long can get you into trouble. It’s much better to get on with tidying your room or revising for an exam than it is to see how many two pence coins you can balance on your nose (I managed 5 yesterday).

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Food and Recipes

Tween Chef – Simple Solo Cooking for Kids

tween chef

Simple solo cooking  –  learn how to make these dishes with minimal assistance from adults.
We recently noticed that there are LOADS of  “cooking with kids” videos on YouTube but not many of them feature kids doing all the cooking. Often they are only allowed to stir things, or decorate the cakes. Most tweens are capable of cooking the entire meal, but often they lack confidence, or are worried about burning themselves, or spilling things.
You will learn basic cooking techniques, and how to stay safe in the kitchen, and as time goes on we will do more complicated dishes.

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Science, Nature and Tech

Lightning Never Strikes Twice

Continuing our Fact or Fable series, today we take a look at the saying ‘Lightning never strikes twice’, with our Science Editor Samantha Gouldson investigating.

Lightning forms when excess amounts of positive and negative electric charge build up in storm clouds. This causes sparks, kind of like static electricity. Sometimes the sparks jump between the clouds but often they jump between the clouds and the ground.

It’s not just thunderstorms that have lightning either; snow storms, sand storms and even the clouds produced by erupting volcanoes can all cause lightning.

volcano

The idea that lightning doesn’t strike twice is a popular saying but one that it’s easy to disprove.

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News & Politics

Women in Politics: Be The Change You Want To See

Recently the online parenting website Mumsnet ran a survey which found that people in politics are seen to be ‘white, middle-class and male’.  We think that ANYONE can become an MP, so we decided to chat to some politicians about diversity in politics.
First up, we wanted to know what it is really like for women in politics. We asked Tina to chat with Heidi Alexander, Labour Minister of Parliament for Lewisham-East in London.

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