My Maiden Name...mine forever?

Noun 1. maiden name - A woman's family name before she is married. Used of a surname that is replaced by a woman when she marries. Also called birth name. (The American Heritage® Dictionary)

Noun 2. maiden name - a woman's surname before marriage (Collins English Dictionary)

 The practice of changing one's name after marriage is controversial among some groups. Some people feel that it is patriarchal, linking the name change with an identification of a woman as man's property, in a sense. Others feel that it simply undermines a woman's personal identity, rejecting her own lengthy family history. For professional women especially, keeping a maiden name may be a matter of career advancement, especially if they became well-known before marriage.
( http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-maiden-name.htm)


My Grandma lives in a small conservative, rural area, she leads a life governed by tradition and religion. Because of this she has major issues with the way my Mum lives. Grandma's idea of a woman is someone who cooks and cleans, someone who is dependent on the men in her life, whether it be her husband or her son or her father. My Ma by comparison is a very independent lady. She went to uni straight after college and got a highschool teachers degree. She know works as university lecturer and researcher in the field of maths. She has her PhD and is an associate proffesor of maths education and the associate dean of research and learning within the university's department of education. She drinks, and horrors of horrors...she kept her maiden name!

When Ma met my Dad he was working as a tradesman, he had never even thought of going to uni and he had never drunk a drop in his life. Mum quickly introduced him to the wider world and he became a mature age student just after I turned three. Mum and Dad also sit down to a nice glass of red wie or a cool beer roughly two times a week. They don't get drunk but yes...they do drink.

My Grandma was (and is) outraged at this behaviour. Of course she could do very little about the whole situation apart from when it came to...Christmas Cards! yes that's right! Grandma takes an annual stand my adressing the christmas card not to Kim and Garry or to Mr Reeve and Ms Beswick or to Mr Reeve and Dr Beswick but to Mr and Mrs Garry Reeve. Every year she ignores Ma when she explains that;
...Yes she does understand Grandma's values but no "could you please respect mine and accept that I am a Beswick not a Reeve"...
A futile struggle indeed as Grandma belives that women are not fit to be equal to men and that this is a God given law, (!?!?!?) reminding me of a quote from Sophocles' Antigone

"We must remeber that we two are first, by nature, women and not fit to fight with men" (haha nice to see I can still find relevence in the material used in English class!)

But on the subject of maiden names I think to Ma, keeping her name was a) easier than changing details at the bank, work, etc but also b) it was one way that she could show she was truly independent and didn't need a man to get places in life.

I have to say, for once I agree with my Mum, the act of a woman changing her name after marriage, historically symbolises that she is no longer her father's property but is now her husband's property, So for me I see no reason why I shouldn't just keep the name I was born with and have that be that.

I do also respect that many women still change their name when they marry simple because that is what "is done" as such or just because they feel it's a mark of respect or closeness to their husband. But I do ask, Why doesn't the husband change his name?

Some food for the thought there...
xx

It's alright to hurt 'bad people'...isn't it?

 30 December 2006
Saddam Hussein is executed by hanging under the conviction of killing 148 Iraqi Shi'ites in 1982.

2 May 2011
Osama bin Laden is shot and killed inside a private residence by US Navy SEALs and CIA operatives.

20 October 2011
Muammar Gaddafi is captured by Libyan rebel forces, beaten and wounded severly and after being gunned down his body is put on public display for four days.

Did you know?
- Saddam Hussein never knew his father (he disappeared six months before Hussein was born) shortly after his fatgher's dissapearence Hussein's older brother died of cancer and Hussein was sent to live with his uncle for three years. After his mother re-married he came home only to be mistreated at the hands of his step father. At the age of 10 Hussein fled his home and went to live with his uncle once more.
-  At university Osama bin Laden fostered a keen interest in religion, writing poetry, economics, charity work and reading. he supported Arsenal F.C. and played centre forward on a local team. He was described as Hard-working.
- In 1948, when he was only six years old, Muammar Gaddafi witnessed the death of his playmates and he sustained injury after an old mine left by the Italian Royal Army exploded on a patch of dirt where they were playing. His two playmates were also his cousins.

All three of these men had wives, parents, children and siblings. They all had beliefs and values, dreams, acheivments and failures. I haven't told you these things to justify their actions, the atrocities that they committed, but to humanise them to the world. Their murder may have been necessary for the saftey of others and to put an end to their tyranny but was it right? After each of their deaths, news coverage across the world showed video of people celebrating. Leaders across the world congratulated the country that 'brought justice', when Osama bin Laden died America held street parties! of course it's hard to blame them, America suffered to much at 9/11 and they have been a focal point for terrorism, likewise in Libya etc. But isnt it sad that an online analysis of bin Laden's death only showed 8% of people in the world believed it is wrong to celebrate death.

Almost double that amount of people in the world celebrated outright over the internet after bin Laden died. And for some it would have been a celebration especially the people who had lost family or friends to terrorism.

But a shocking 25% of internet users treated bin Laden's murder as a joke! To me this is worse than celebrating, many people would have been hurt so badly that I can hardly fault them for being happy but to treat death, any death, as a joke, to me is unaceptable.

It's pretty obvious what my opinion on murder and violence is but let me state it anyway:
I believe that violence should be avoided at all costs and that murder is wrong, however there are shades of grey, for example; a father killing someone who posed a serious threat to the wellbeing of his children or the murder of the three men above. While their death may have needed to happen I believe that it should still have been recognised as murder and that death should never be a cause for celebration or worse ridicule.
I started thinking about this issue of 'an eye for an eye' a few days ago when I realised that in the last week I had seen three different posts by different people asking "where so and so was" and "would anyone be willing to bash him up?" These people were dead serious and the reasons for wanting to cause harm to these offenders ranged from rape to a bad break-up. It actually scared me that people my own age (14-20) thought it was all right to go and casually beat someone up if they caused offence. To me, the idea of lowering myself to the standards of the offender is ridiculous and wrong...far better to report the incident because I full-heartedly believe (especially in the context of teens solving their problems) that 'violence is never the answer.'
No matter what they have done...these people are human, hurting them lowers us to their level, makes us what we despise and can potentially take away the sacred gift of life! They have wives, parents, children and siblings. they have beliefs and values, dreams, acheivments and failures.
What kind of message do we send to the world if we believe that violence is ok...as long as it happens to 'bad' people?

Under the Pump...TQA style!

As a student I have had the fortune to be counted amongst the masses of frantic teenagers that seem to pop up all over the world as exam time approaches.  Even more fortunate... I FINISHED my exams yesterday! oh the joy!....nothing else can compare! As a resident of Tasmania the exam format was dictated to us by TQA, a somewhat frustrting organisation who surely spend their lives researching ways to make students lives as miserable as possible. This year they may have reached their goal of ultimate student despair through the English Studies level three exam. The collective tension in the room reached peak height as us students opened our section B exam booklets to fnd that not only was the exam full of average questions but also full of grammatical confusions and contradictions to what we had been told to study for all year! At that point I was ready to weep having just endured, the day before a Maths Applied exam that I definatley failed :(


Of course I picked my self up (metally of course!) and pushed through a torturous two hours of almost certain failiure and left the exam ready to hit someone.

When the wall of  anrgy muttering students (including myself) surged out of our respective rooms we were met with a row of dejected English teachers all clutching exam papers to their chests and looking shattered, we knew for sure that we were not simply being typical grumpy complaining students but that in fact the exam had been worse than normal and we were totally justified in our complaints. One student yelled "do they pay the people that screen those exams?" and I swear on my life that I heard one teacher say under her breath "they should shoot them!"

 Later as I was walking through town to reach a  1 o'clock bus stop, almost two hours later, I saw one of those same dejected teachers shuffling through the mall, exam paper still firmly in his grasp but with the addition of a large coffee, a haunted look in his eyes. Clearly some poeple will be needing therapy this year.

However the aim of this particuler post is not just to complain about TQA (I do enough of that without resorting to posting on the internet!) or to warn year ten students of their impending doom, or to tell teachers they should go see a shrink so that they are able minded enough to cope with another year of teaching. All these things are of course very very relavent what I was going to say orginally is that the matra teachers chant at us through the year "early study makes for a good exam" is actually a pretty smart idea! I do know for a fact that no matter how much study I put in for this particular english exam I still would have been really shocked and un-prepared but maybe I wouldn't have sat there for twenty minutes in shock, maybe I could have reduced that time to ten minutes of shock and subsequently had ten more minutes time to write absolute toss and nonsense in order to look smart.

Studying is hard at the best of times but when it's the end of the year and all there is is you and the looming exams that you wish you could just sprint away from, it's even harder. I know I can find a million things to do before study: washing, cleaning, movies, reading, playing, walking the dog, sleeping, making up exam time jokes:(thanks Ben)

If English Studies really hard, it might pass the exam...

 If Maths Applied, I wouldn't give it the job.

and the massive time killer...FACEBOOK. It's easier to get distracted and as facebook so wisley tells us, the average students has the attitude of: "ten minutes of study, I think I have earned my hour of Facebook" Yes, you may jest but are you really? I thought I was but turns out I am a total facebook junkie in exam time.
so guys it's important that we study, after all this two years is very little time in the sceme of things but these two years also count a huge deal if we want to go to Uni with a good score and re-tain our summers instead of spending them doing bridging programs. Hate to put the 'mum' hat on but you know i'm right ;)

So from my friends that did study sucsessfully this year:
-give your facebook password to a (trusted!) friend so they can change your password over exam time
-get rid of your phone! KILL IT or something...
-go to tutes that are provided
-do things such as go for a walk every couple of hours between study
-drink coffee!
-sleep...lots, but at nightime not at studytime! (I can personally vouch that sleep would have helped me!)

Good Luck x