Moving into college can be an overwhelming experience from making friends to settling in by yourself. It is important to make the space you live in comfortable and unique to your style because it makes a huge difference in your mental health. However, it is important to use money and space saving techniques when decorating and personalizing your dorm room.  Dorm rooms usually come with the basic furniture items you need; a bed, desk, chair, closet, and sometimes even a fridge. Aside from furniture you will need to make practical purchases which include bed sheets and duvets, clothing hangers, lamps (if they do not come with the room), and some…

Recovering from the New Year’s parties, we come to the dreaded realization that we have to start fulfilling our resolutions and goals. The first two weeks are easy since you’re inspired and energized but when the third week hits and life goes back to normal we start to lose motivation. When it comes to setting goals it can get overwhelming pretty quickly. A lot of the time, you might not see results immediately and will get discouraged. Raise your hand if you’ve ever asked yourself these questions:  These are all questions I myself have wondered aloud and even gotten frustrated over. What I didn’t know then is that it takes…

The past two years, 2020 to 2022, have seen the highest inflation rate in 40 years, since 1981. Inflation progression hurts our savings and make them lose their purchase value over the years. The $100 000 you saved 20 years ago cannot no longer buy you the same home you visited in the year 2000. How can we preserve the purchase value of our savings? When you are not a financial expert and need to find tangible and safe ways to preserve the value of your savings, you can consider these two vehicles: 1) Real Estate and 2) Gold 1. Real estate Real estate has always been one of the…

Moving out of home to start the first year of college can certainly be stressful on freshmen. Thinking about what to pack, and weather it’ll be enough or not, might add to this stress. The good news: You do not need a lot! Many of the Zoomers (Gen Z) are adopting the minimalist approach to living, for ethical and environmental reasons. A clutter-free dorm room will increase your focus and productivity, and help you get those high scores. So let’s break it down to a few essentials: 1) Bedding Get away with using one set of bedding (hence avoiding to dedicate storage space for an extra set) by planning your…

Shyness can be one of the most debilitating character traits. I’m not talking about the kind of shyness where if someone compliments you , you blush… I’m talking about severe shyness, the kind where you simply can’t approach people, you can’t talk to people, you can’t make requests and sometimes you’re too scared to even make a phone call. It is self-doubt that leads us to being shy. It is very much related to how we perceive ourselves, how others perceive us and the importance we attach to how others perceive us. It is not our personality, as some psychologists would have you believe. Self-doubt is a negative characteristic that…

When Mother’s Day approaches, we tend to remember all the wonderful things about our mothers. And so we should, mothers deserve it, after all, they’ve been there for us, they’ve taught us all we know, they’ve shared good and bad moments with us… but sometimes, it’s not the mother who has done all that. Sometimes it’s the stepmother. Being a stepmother is an uphill battle. In fairy tales, literature and television, stepmothers are portrayed as cruel, selfish, unfair and usually insane. I mean when someone says stepmother, who doesn’t think of Cinderella’s evil stepmother or Snow White’s even more evil stepmother? But life is rarely as black and white as…

I don’t understand men. When I say I don’t understand, I do not mean that I can’t identify with their behaviour, I do not mean that I do not comprehend their logic, I also do not mean that I disagree with their principles. What I am trying to say is that when they talk, I don’t actually understand a word they’re saying. Why is this? We are both human beings after all, and we both communicate through vowels and consonants, so why don’t I understand a word they say? This question has lead me to think, and think hard I did. I thought about all the possible reasons for this…

Sometimes it feels like men have been given some natural license to treat women like subordinates or inferiors, and women have been fighting for decades to change this perception. This is why seeing women being abused by their partners is especially difficult to accept. Battered Wife Syndrome is the name given to the psychological and behavioural symptoms derived from this type of abusive relationship. It is my bias that it is no one’s right to hit anyone, children included because it demeans the individual. A woman who suffers this kind of abuse believes that the violence is her fault and actually has an inability to place the blame elsewhere, mainly…

There’s a certain stigma associated with being female and being childfree. Because being childfree-by-choice is rather frowned upon in our child-centric society, most women who don’t want children, rarely say so openly. They try to avoid the disapproving stares and cries of, “How can you not want children?!” and go into hiding. In fact a woman who doesn’t want children is often labelled a selfish woman. It’s more difficult for a woman to admit that she does not want children as men are often exempt from such pressure. Women on the other hand must answer to other women, to mothers, to aunts, to neighbours and even to friends. When my…