I have done more than my fair share of complaining about all things in and around education. I still stand by every one of these claims I have made or regurgitated but after today I need to make it blindingly obvious that everything I adore about school outweighs the flaws a billion to one.

In sociology, at GCSE specifically, we do a lot of evaluation on how big of a part school plays in comparison to that of your own family, the media etc. What I am getting at after a really rather overwhelming day is that school itself, and it's structure, is shit. (Swearing is ok, I have decided, as long as you back it up with the argument that each swear word is utterly socially constructed and instead of dwelling on my use of it you should probably dwell on why we have given meaning to a random string of four letters.) Yes, school limits people from certain backgrounds and doesn't teach the things it should and has such a huge potential blah blah blah everything I have ever gone on about recently. At the start of this academic year I led a few parent tours for prospective parents around my school, trying to persuade them to send their children to us. In a wave of brutal honesty I engaged in conversation with a woman who vocalised exactly what was on my lips: every school has to be run at a certain standard (arguably). But let's talk theoretical and essentially - with a pinch of wishful thinking - every school has guidelines and standards which mean that at whichever state comprehensive/academy/whatever you are going to get much of a muchness. While I know this is not even a valid point if it was this is the thing: as I told this parent in September, it is the way we as the students choose to interact with what is available to us.

In comparing school to friends and family in terms of a network of solid support I can't make too much of a clear difference. The support provided is obviously completely different and incomparable but the effect and value I place on them is equal. Today was the last real day of my form tutor/English teacher being at my school. I have actually forgotten why I started writing this - today has been as horrendous as is has been bizarre. Individual people have incredible capabilities to change who you are as a person in such short and temporary periods of time. You absorb them and learn from them and change and this change can't ever be measured until you are forced to acknowledge it. I can't say if this is specific to the schools I have been in and I really hope it is not, but there are some incredible, fantastic, wonderful people alive and if they happen to be teaching at your school then please realise it. I want to change people's lives and the way they think and I want to know that despite all these horrid things which are wrong with our society, there are people who care and believe and try to make a difference against all odds. There definitely are. Having someone believe in you who isn't obliged to through genetic means is worth the world. 

Sought out these people. I feel incredibly lucky to have had the support of people like this. Be inspired.

This has been really bloody cringey and I am mentally exhausted but also so very grateful. That is literally all - I now need to find a way to tell my mum that my phone charger is in school without getting killed and I don't think I can get out of it using the phrase social construct.

It astounds me that people are in the mindset that they are more deserving of all the opportunities a country like Britain has to offer, than someone born elsewhere. For the sake of example, Syria. Maybe once you've made a contribution to the - for lack of a better term - "goingson" of a country I can see your point but I still cannot and will not agree that anyone is more entitled to reap the benefits of a successful infrastructure than someone that happens to have been raised elsewhere. What effort or toil did you actually have to go through in order to be born in this country? Exactly! David Cameron can very well call the refugees and migrants travelling through Europe a "swarm" and a "bunch" but that doesn't make them more or less human than he is. So what if they're economic migrants! If you were in a country with few opportunities to support your family and obtain a job which you enjoy, the reasonable and obvious solution would be to move. 

I just can't get past the idea that we made these borders. We decided where one country would start and another would end. We drew them on a map. Some of the countries, governments and currencies have done well, have created good places for societies to reside in. Others haven't. And that's just the thing: some people succeed and some people don't. But I personally did not have a hand in ensuring Britain is a place where I get to attend school everyday and go to the doctors when something happens. And because I had no hand in making that happen, I have no more claim to it than anybody else, including those overseas in countries with corrupt governments and crumbling economies. 

I know it's not feasible to just get rid of them; I get that we are too deep into this now that we can't just decide to get rid of them all. I also get that there isn't exactly any practical solution - we can't have one power controlling the entire population of the Earth. I'm not trying to provide answers because if I did you'd have heard about them at the beginning. I am just really quite sick of hearing people talk so flippantly of the refugee crisis. Of using such vile, derogatory terms to reference them. Of genuinely upholding their own ascribed privilege to explain why refugees shouldn't be helped. Because, God forbid, it actually affects you! 

I hate to be that person and I know I am a lot of the time, but in relation to some people your problems aren't that big of a deal. They are very much legitimate and valid, but you are lucky enough to have been provided with years of education and even if worst came to worst there is facilities to deal with the aftermath of a lot of bad situations. These people may have fled a country engulfed by warfare, where their only chance is to leave for safe land. Or they may have left in search of better economic opportunities. But I do not think they are any less entitled to what Britain has to offer because the geographical location of their birth wasn't where you think it should have been.  

Just to briefly mention the wristbands in Wales, although I believe they are being reconsidered... How did anyone sit there and think that was a good idea? How did it go through the various meetings with no one recognising how scarily close branding someone as an 'outsider' is to Nazi policy? I know mankind isn't that done for! Marking someone with a physical item to identify them leaves them vulnerable and susceptible to the vile hatred that has blossomed in lieu of the refugee intake. It isn't hard to work out that people aren't always wonderful and this gives them the prime opportunity to put their views into practice. Yet no one stopped it, which just about reflects the pinnacle of the problem. 

This is very much short but sweet: I have such a clear cut, definite view on this. I cannot comprehend how something we ourselves created (borders) can be what creates privilege. It is absolutely crazy. I want, more than anything, for people crossing these dangerous seas and taking the risks of travelling to be regarded as human beings. Which, funnily enough, they actually are. (In case you hadn't noticed). Not only are they endangering their lives on these horrific journeys but they are also being met with incredulous hostility on the way. 

I've heard numerous people suggest that people are made more attractive by them not knowing they are attractive. Is that not only a morally awful concept, but also highly damaging? We shouldn't be enforcing the message that a) our attractiveness is measured in how other people see us and b) self hatred makes us more appealing. It shouldn't matter what other people think of us as long as we are content within the bodies we have. The whole premise that someone is only beautiful if they themselves don't believe they are is just undeniably detrimental. Think about it for a second. We are telling young children (in an intensely emotional period of their lives) that they need to be hating their bodies in order to increase their appeal to others. Self love isn't about anyone else. It's about you. It shouldn't be frowned on to like yourself! Surely, it has to be better than the alternative?

 Is it not bad enough that the media constantly and perpetually tried to tell us what beauty looks like, giving it a specific number on weighing scales and an ethnicity too? We shouldn't be building on that! We should be telling the young generations that the media is wrong and that you don't have to be skinny, blond and white to fit the label of beautiful. I feel like its all to obvious that this is just another instance where we've allowed the media to warp reality and it becomes the primary force guiding our morals. I want to believe in meliorism, I really do. I know that if one person has the capacity to believe in a society where we are allowed to actually be ourselves, free of remorse, then it's a belief that anyone can hold. We just need to remove ourselves from the situation for like, five seconds, and realise that it is not ugly to love yourself. What is ugly, is making people think that they need to hate the way the are in order to appeal to anyone else. 

This is prevalent everywhere - so many songs in the charts convey this very concept and that is why it's such a huge issue. Body dysmorphia is a real thing and we aren't helping at all with our archaic, backwards beliefs. I'm just exploring my own thoughts here, but this is surely a feminist issue. Girls take the brunt of the media's idealised beauty (not to excuse others impacted by the way we are expected to look, just hear me out) and the sheer heteronormativity in pop culture alludes to most of the pop anthems sung by men being about women. If it is primarily girls being told they need to be uncomfortable in their bodies, dislike the way the look and tone down the self confidence to appear attractive to a male then this is just another imbalance of power between genders. It is another example of where girls are still being taught these meek traits in order to submit to a male counterpart, and quite frankly it's repulsive. 

This is relatively short because I don't think there is really too much to even say. It's not a difficult thing to get your head around that it is disgusting to teach people that self hatred is the way to achieve affection from other people. I don't know that in this day and age self respect is even possible. We are so programmed to hate our bodies if we don't fit a certain image and, when asked to name traits both physical and otherwise about ourselves that we like, it's probably one of the most difficult things to do. I am absolutely as guilty of this as anyone else. But we can all at least give it a shot this year, to learn to actually love and respect ourselves for the sake of ourselves and no one else. Happy New Year!