Our research project is coming along! I'm incredibly excited about the potential prospect of publication, and also incredibly grateful to the other team members in my group. We made a flow chart the other day outlining the causal mechanism behind how extra-curricular activities would eventually result in academic and social outcomes. It's still there on the whiteboard in my kitchen, and I adore it. I love the interdisciplinary of the social sciences, and how, even if just for a moment, we get to engage in it too.

I also really enjoy being part of this cohort; the SDG lab has brought together 20 random and entirely different people whos only commonalities are that we all go to the same university and that we are all incredibly smart. As I write this, the energy in the room is very low (it's 10am and I think half of us are half-asleep, me included), but usually the energy here is electrifying! I've never done such an extended group project, and have really liked bouncing off ideas with my teammates, who I can now also call my friends.

Yesterday I spent a solid chunk of my day designing a poster that we can use to advertise our pantomime project to the pupils in the school we'll be working at. We haven't begun sessions yet, but I'm super excited to start! Something I often reflect on is how I need to remember that when I'm ambling down the cobbled streets of Oxford, that I have the intense privilege of living within a bubble within a bubble. I learned that Oxford is the 2nd most unequal city in the UK, behind Cambridge. It can hardly be a coincidence that the greatest academic institutions in this country preside in areas with staggeringly high inequality and rates of childhood poverty. I feel that there is an 800-year-old chasm between the university and Oxford's local residents, punctuated by literal walls. As a beneficiary of this inequality I must do my bit to help alleviate parts of the problem. I'm excited to get stuck in!