Emma Turner

At the end of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Harry looks longingly back at Hogwarts as he boards the train back to London and sighs, “I’m not going home. Not really.” As I stood in my college gardens a few days ago, knowing it would be the last time in a long time that I would see the sun fall upon the red brick fortress, I felt pretty much the same. ‘Home’ has always been a funny kind of word for me. I tend to use it liberally, believing that someone can have more than one at a time

It’s 10am in Chile and I’m catching up with a friend from college. It’s 2pm for her and, as is often the case within the bubble when I ask how she’s doing, the subject inevitably tends towards how she’s studying. “I’m doing okay but I’m not very productive. I haven’t even started studying today yet,” she sighs. It’s a familiar self-admonishing response which has become foreign to me over the past year of living and working abroad. The need to be productive at all times to achieve certain goals,

Four days after arriving in Cambridge, barely unpacked and already exhausted, I was having my first ever essay crisis: I had just been given a 2000-word assignment on a 19th century French book I hadn’t yet finished reading, to be handed in in just a few days’ time. Lectures had not yet begun, freshers’ events had not finished, but there I was in the library. This was the first essay crisis of many, but it was one which set a dangerous precedent. Such an early piece of substantial work – accomp

I am now in my second year of studying French and Spanish, and this means many new things: my reading list has practically tripled, I’ve learnt a few lessons about leaving supervision essays until the night before, and I still feel like I have no idea what I’m talking about most of the time. It also means I’ve started the mammoth task of planning my Year Abroad: a terrifying yet exhilarating prospect which involves translating my CV into other languages, hunting down and applying to approximatel

A reflection on the highs and lows of six months interning in the city of lights. The first day of my internship in Paris set the tone for everything I would learn in the months to come. I have accidentally arrived at the office twenty minutes early. A consequence of my metro-related anxiety and my fantastic capacity to get lost on most days. Today isn’t one of those days, and so here I am, standing outside an impressive Haussmannian office building, choking on cigarette smoke (thanks, France)

There’s something irresistible about a morning routine that claims to transform our lives. The internet is replete with wacky anecdotes about any number of successful people in the world – presidents who swear by just four hours of sleep per night, business magnates who start their everyday jog before 6 am, or influencers who drink a picture-perfect green smoothie at sunrise. For a committed night owl who can’t seem to get to bed before midnight (and who functions extremely badly on less than s

One thought reverberated around my mind as we stood around a small dining table draped in white lace, listening as our host introduced herself: We are far too sleep-deprived for this much enthusiasm. We had quite literally come so far: over 2,300 miles to be exact, mostly across the vast Pacific ocean. And five hours of flight time, some waiting around at the overcrowded baggage carousel and a squashed taxi ride later, we had arrived at our accommodation on Rapa Nui.

I still remember the first time I borrowed from my local public library. It was a summer during primary school, the kind of summer which never seems to end; when the (vaguely) sunny days melt one into another but September never feels any closer. A trip into our nearest town revealed a side-street I’d never been up before, and on that side street: a library. We got to pick our library card colours (mine was blue) and were equipped with a fabric tote bag for carrying the many books we’d be readi

It’s midday on a Saturday, and a group of friends sit around the kitchen table in varying states of bleary-eyed messiness. As one raids the fridge looking for carbs to go with the much-needed coffee, another replays last night’s Instagram story and occasionally groans at the embarrassing content recorded therein. A third swallows ibuprofen and hopes no-one will remember her throwing up last night. The collective headache and churning nausea hanging over the room is accepted – expected, even. It

If we do nothing about climate change, we will be seeing the consequences within a few decades. It will no longer be something we read about like a distant future. It will affect our daily lives; it will put our children at risk; it will cause droughts, floods, the extinction of vital species. It’s not time to think about action. It’s time to panic. This is a climate emergency. And you can do something about it – starting with a few tiny daily actions. It might seem like your personal actions d