What am I even doing? Also where have I been?

Strap yourselves in friends because I’m about to take you on a wild ride through bird filled soundscapes, to the struggles of coding hills, and past the glorious fieldwork hills of yonder.

First I should address that it’s been almost 3 months since my last blog post on January 4^th, I’ve been at conferences, on field work, frantically coding, and many more things that have seen my take a brief break from blog writing. But that’s ok, I’m back now!

SO ANYWAY, I was trying to think of what to write about this fortnight and it came to mind that I actually haven’t really gone into what I am researching for my masters. In short I am developing automated bioacoustics methods to monitor south-eastern Australian parrots, but really that’s a sentence full of jargon so let me break it down a little better for you.

This is a Bioacoustics Automated Recorder (BAR) made by Frontier Labs that I deployed at Chiltern Mt Pilot in December 2016, these recordings were full of bird life – Photo is my own.

As per an earlier blog post of mine (*ahem* here) monitoring species for conservation is important and valuable, and there are emerging technologies that allow for improved monitoring outcomes.  My research aims to explore three algorithms that will generate species specific call templates, that is to say, they combine a set of pre-identified recordings of an animal and use the input to identify the target species within field recordings. Each algorithm matches the template to the field recording in a slightly different way, so I won’t go into that in this blog post, but that’s not a bad idea for a future post. In any case, as I already said, I have been exploring three of these automated recognition algorithms to work out how precise they are, and how likely they are to detect the target species if it is present by testing them across 22 species of parrots found in south-eastern Australia. Next up is altering the output a little to make the recognisers more specific (won’t detect the wrong species as the target species as often, but may miss detections of the species), or more sensitive (won’t miss any detections of the target species, but may identify the wrong species as the target species) and analysing the benefits and costs of each approach.

This is a Song Meter 2+ (SM2+) made by Wildlife Acoustics that I deployed at Wyperfeld National Park in September 2016, these recordings were taken while the west half of the state was flooding so the recordings aren’t as full of birds as the others but something is better than nothing! – Photo is my own.

Making sense so far? I sure hope so because I can’t live update this content to reflect the level of understanding anyone currently has. What am I saying? Get back on track Kate…

So back in my blog post about monitoring I did explain briefly why bioacoustics is good and what I was planning to do, but that was almost a year ago and by now I have all of my field data from various field trips, have analysed a sizable chunk of it, and I have built some preliminary recognisers using R-studio. Basically at this stage we’ve found out that we can actually make these automated recognisers for parrots, and I have had a lot of success making templates for Gang-gang Cockatoos.

This is a spectrogram image produced in R-studio showing a Gang-gang Cockatoo calling in one of my field recordings, each coloured box represents a detection made by my templates, pretty encouraging results so far! – Photo is my own.

In the above photo you can see spectrogram output showing Gang-gang Cockatoo calls fading in and out as the bird flies over the automated recording unit. The stronger calls are outlined in red, the weaker in blue with a decent margin of cross over where the mid-range calls are outlined in both red and blue. Later in the recording a warbler vocalisation is present but not identified by the templates as a Gang-gang call, suggesting that these first build recognition methods are working quite well at detecting the targeted species with some level of accuracy.

Next on the cards is further tests for accuracy and so forth, as well as building more sophisticated templates and testing them over less ‘clean’ field recordings. Anyway, that’s all for this fortnight, next fortnight I will either give you guys another species profile or I’ll go into which recognition algorithms I’m using and roughly how they work.

Steam Powered Space Ships?

In my lab we talk a lot about broader ecology and evolution topics, so to me space technology always seems worlds away.

After spending a large portion of today trying to work out what to write about for this fortnight’s blog post, I decided to ask a few friends; one of whom jokingly said “the science of steam powered space ships”. I don’t really have much of an idea of what exactly is possible in terms of space travel, given my specialties lie in birds, ecology, and noise, so I had a look around the university archives to see what I could see, because damned if steam powered space ships don’t sound AMAZING.

When I think of a steam powered vehicle I think of something like this, definitely not of a spaceship! – Image via Flickr

So really I’m still not entirely sure if this is one big April fool’s joke, but the first article I’m going to reference was posted April 10^th so hopefully not?  But check this thing out; not only do scientists see potential for steam powered space craft which run on solar heat/energy, but also 3D printed moon houses. Like WHAT? My ‘get lost in the forest and find birds’ mind is absolutely BLOWN by the potential to 3D print fricken MOON BASES. What boggles my mind even further is that this is nothing new, back in 2004 steam engines were recognised as having a high potential for use in space craft. Further to this, solar/steam powered space craft seem to have the potential to be ridiculously cheap if built right, this 2011 design of a space coach sounds like the coolest damn space bus idea I’ve read.

I’m sorry I’m getting a little bit excited about this whole idea right now and I need to get back into the science side of things.

I didn’t really know what else to go with here, but an amazing picture of space never goes astray really – Image via Flickr

Basically the idea is that solar panels harness the suns energy to heat water, and thanks to the low gravity on lunar surfaces/no gravity in space thing the propulsion from the steam being emitted from the pressure build up would be sufficient to propel the spacecraft forward. You wouldn’t be able to get all that far on a tank but you can refill the water using ice resources on planet surfaces (although I’m not sure what they want to do about Mars). Most space missions at the moment load up with everything they need and more in the one go, it is my understanding that using steam/solar energy to cruise around the solar system would mean refueling and supply stations would be necessary, and possible!

So I guess there’s still a lot to figure out in terms of making this a reality, but by all means it’s much, much closer than I could have ever guessed it was. I kind of feel like I’m going to wake up in 10 years’ time and it’s going to be Star Wars or FireFly and honestly, that’s pretty damn exciting for this sci-fi nerd.

Further Reading

Cool article

Cool Book

Fieldwork Fun part 2

Hey everyone… anyone? I’ve had a massive fortnight of fieldwork, deploying SongMeter and BAR units across Northern Victoria in Chiltern Mt Pilot and Warby Ovens National Parks, as well as shot gun microphone surveying in Barmah and surrounds so I haven’t had time to write you a blog post, but here are some lovely photos of the journey.

A stunning view of Warby Ovens National Park – photo is my own.

Significant roadside Superb Parrot habitat was pretty exciting, we saw a lot of parrots but unfortunately very few Superbs and the wind was so bad that the recordings were useless – photo is my own.

Some picturesque trees in Barmah National Park, I love the flood marks up the trunks of the gums – photo is my own.

Lovely spot for a SongMeter if I do say so myself, looking forward to listening to the recordings from this Chiltern Mt Pilot site – photo is my own.

My top 5 tips for public speaking and presentation success

So today I was at a biological sciences postgraduate symposium at the University of Melbourne, when reflecting on how I prepare for a presentation I thought I might share some helpful (for me at least) tips about how I do it.

First I would like to preface this with; I understand not everyone can work in the way I do, but doing these things (or rather, not doing things) has really helped me let go of a lot of public speaking anxiety and get really comfortable in front of an audience.

I swear I’m in the bottom right corner of this photo, this is my 3 minute talk slide from today – Photo by Annie Aulsebrook

1 – Submit the wrong title for your presentation by accident.

Now this may not seem like a helpful hint, but really I’ve learnt a lot about presenting through the mistakes I’ve made, and while a sensible title is always good, often a funny title will lighten the mood and encourage people to listen to you a little more, if nothing else, it will start your presentation off with some smiles. Don’t forget though that you need to know your audience, a silly title might be totally acceptable, if not encouraged, in a ‘3-minute-thesis’ type meet, but not as easily received at a more prestigious academic conference.

2 – Totally forget that you signed up to present

Forgetting this sort of thing may also seem counterproductive to presenting well, but if you don’t spend a month in the lead up to the presentation stressing about something or worrying about every little detail you will often find your presentation will have a more natural feel to it and be easier to listen to for the audience.

3 – Don’t make your slides until a few days before your talk (and other slide pointers)

So this is going to be a fairly long point, because most of my pet peeve in presentations come from slides. Practice and time will get the other 4 points to you, but slides, man there is no excuse not to nail these from early on.

DO include a title slide, pictures, acknowledgements, and shorthand references on the relevant slide.

DO NOT include an essay on slides, picture references on each slide, a reference slide, a tacky ‘the end’ slide.

When you present to an audience you want them to listen to you, most people will spend their time looking at your slides, but they should be listening to you while they do so, your slides are meant to compliment what you’re saying not re-iterate it. Large, relevant pictures from ‘creative commons’ sources (Flickr is an excellent source for this) are great, alongside short dot points which highlight the key points you’re making. Long references for each point you’re making or picture you’re using will clutter up your slide and no one is going to follow them, when I am talking about something I’ve read in a journal I include “Authors et al (2016)” in the bottom corner of the slide and people can jot that down nice and quickly if they want to go back and read further on those points. At the end of your presentation include a nice slide with your acknowledgements (for me that’s supervisors, lab mates, funding sources, affiliations), and leave it there, do not use a reference slide.

Make sure the colours on your slide contrast well, for example don’t use anything that colour blind people might not be able to see, or any colours that are too similar, although they might look great on your computer screen they probably won’t project in a clear or coherent way and all your hard word will have been pointless. And last but not least, you should average on one slide per minute for your presentation, for me if I have a 3-minute length presentation I only have one slide, but the general rule of thumb is one slide a minute which means you aren’t flipping through slides too quickly and goes hand in hand with trying to get people to listen to you instead of ignoring you and reading your slides.

 Here is an example of a slide I would use in a presentation, note the reference in the bottom corner.

4 – Forget to write your talk until the day of the presentation, or maybe don’t write one at all

These days I don’t even write a talk out for presentations, I just have a series of dot points that I want to remember in a roughly cohesive order. Another good thing to ad here is DO NOT USE NOTES! Put down the cue cards, don’t take that iPad up with you, don’t read off the slides, just have your dot points written out and memorised and speak from there. This leads into my next point…

5 – Don’t run through your presentation (much)

It’s ok to practice your presentation once or twice in front of lab mates, family, or friends. But for the love of good talking do not run through your talk until you know every word by heart. Why you ask? Well that’s because if you rehearse too much your presentation will have an over rehearsed feel to it, and whether you realise it or not you will start to sound bored with what you’re saying, and let me tell you, the audience will definitely notice. As mentioned before, just have a rough idea of what order you need to say things in and let the words come.

Public speaking is a huge fear for a lot of people, and I don’t claim to be an expert on what makes a talk better or worse, I can only speak here from my own experiences of learning how to present. But I do know that the more you do it the better you’ll get, and the more talks you do the more natural your manner in front of an audience will become and the more people will really want to listen to you.

Since you made it this far here is a picture of my backyard magpie buddy Reggie

 

Gettin’ eggy with it – Species profile 5 (crimson rosella)

Crimson rosella species profile – the secret life of crimson rosellas, their sub species, and the ring species concept. I know it’s been 3 weeks since I last posted instead if the usual 2 but I’ve been in and out of the field and I got my weeks the wrong way around, and by the time I realised it was yesterday and too late to do anything but post today!

Crimson Rosella

Platycercus elegans

A positively adorable crimson rosella, my lab mates can tell you that as I was choosing photos for this post I was making a lot of ‘naaawwww’ and ‘eeeee’ noises. Image via Flickr

Crimson rosellas are one of my favourite parrots, not because of their plumage or their distinctive calls, but because – where most birds with broods that hatch asymmetrically (that is, not all on the same day) feed the strongest or more competitive chicks – the crimson rosella parents share food equally between the chicks. Often the daddy rosella will feed the last-hatched/youngest chicks before the older/stronger chicks, and if you ask me that’s freaking adorable. If that wasn’t enough to make you think that these parrots are adorable, their juvenile plumage is this pretty green colour, and as they moult out they go this adorable speckled green/red mish mash while their adult plumage comes through and it’s seriously adorable. I mean come on look at it.

As the juvenile moults out the green will be steadily replaced with the typical adult red/black/blue colour scheme, the green does a great job with camouflage though! Image via Flickr

Crimson rosellas, like most other endemic parrots, nest in eucalyptus hollows, and breed towards the end of the year starting in September, with the latest pairings in January. But, contrary to their names, the crimson rosella isn’t always red. There are three main colour morphs of the crimson rosella, the first is the red birds we’re all well acquainted with (Platycercus elegans), then there is the yellow colour morph found around northern Victoria and Murray River (Platycercus elegans flaveolus) commonly called the yellow rosella, and the orange colour morph from Adelaide (Platycercus elegans adelaidae) commonly called the Adelaide rosella.

A lovely example of a yellow rosella, the orange rosellas can range anywhere between a light orange almost yellow colour through to a dark orange almost crimson colour and anywhere in between. Image via Flickr

The most interesting part about the colour morphs of the crimson rosella is that they form a classic example of a ring species – where two divergent forms of a species exist together, connected geographically by intermediate forms. Which makes these parrots not only super sweet, adorable little muffins with blue cheeks, but also really biologically cool and interesting. Crimson Rosellas have it all! Interestingly, studies have shown that calls from the parrots at each end of the ‘ring’ do not have different calls for three of four tested variables.

And if you’ve gotten this far another reason I love crimson rosellas – as a totally anecdotal story – is that last Saturday, amidst my fieldwork, I was sitting in the middle of a gorgeous eucalypt forest in the Grampians National Park. As I sat there with my handheld microphone recording for parrot calls this gorgeous big crimson rosella lands on a branch not 1m from me, regards me with its beautiful liquid eye, sits with me for a minute and then calmly flies away. The serene nature of these birds makes them truly special. And now I’m waffling about nothing so I’m going to give you a quick species summary and leave you guys there!

 

Species Summary:

Name: Crimson Rosella

Average Size: 34cm

Average Weight: 129g

Diet: Eucalypt seeds, grasses, shrubs, sometimes insects and blossoms

Breeding Season: September-January.

Preferred Nesting Trees: Eucalypt

Population estimation: Least Concern

 

Information for this entry is from;

BirdLife Australia and they’re lovely online data sheets.

HANZAB Vol 4.

Australian Government Dept. of Environment – species profile and threats database.

Other sources linked within the text.

COOL FACTS ABOUT POLAR BEARS

Plenty of people know Polar Bears have black skin, but did you know they also have transparent fur? I didn’t! Here are some pretty cool (no pun intended) facts about polar bears with some background information too!

Hello there friend, I am a polar bear and I have the snow on my snoot. Image Via Flickr

Polar bears are an animal almost everyone is familiar with; they’re large, white, iconic animals from the Arctic circle bought to the masses thanks to Coca-Cola ™. But with the slow melting of the polar caps in recent years, where does that leave our snowy white friends from the arctic? Well, at this rate, up shit (can I swear here? I think I can swear here.. I’m swearing here) creek without a paddle. You see, polar bears chill out (you smiled, don’t deny it) on sea ice platforms, using these platforms to hunt their main source of food – seals. As climate change impacts the Arctic Circle, the extent of sea ice platforms is diminished leading to less food and den access for polar bears, which reduces their body condition and lowers cub survival. So really these cute bears aren’t just adorable soft drink selling fluff butts, they’re pretty screwed, JUST. LIKE. EVERYTHING. ELSE. But the image of a starving polar bear is often a little more shocking, and might stir some action. But I digress.

Look at these polar bear cubs, if we don’t stop being hugely irresponsible with carbon emissions these little bundles of joy may never grow up to wear red coke scarves. Image via Flickr 

So back to the cool fur stuff. So polar bears, like many arctic animals, have a double coat where the inner fur is dense and insulating and the outer fur is made up of longer guard hairs. Basically, the guard hairs are hollow, tapered, and contain a mixture of air and magical polar bear dust that scatters visible light. BUT not only does it scatter visible light, it is also kind of luminescent. This means that some of the light that hits the translucent hair gets trapped within the hair, and bounces around within the hollow core creating a soft luminescence further adding to the white appearance. The magical polar bear dust is actually, when viewed under the microscope, small bumps within the shaft of the hair that scatter light adding to the luminescent effect. Pretty cool hey!

In this stunning photo you can kind of see the transparent fur of the polar bear in the water. Image via Flickr

Now, I didn’t just write this post to whine at you all again about why climate change is terrible and talk about cool as guard hairs on big white bears, I came to give you some COLD HARD fun facts about polar bears! So here’s 4 more.

1 – Polar bears are considered marine mammals, and they’re the only large marine mammal to have large, powerful limbs and feet to travel across land.

2 – An adult male polar bear can get as heavy at 700kg! That’s one big carnivorous bear, and actually makes them the largest bears.

3 – While polar bears are largely found in the Arctic circle, they have also been seen in Canada, Greenland, Norway, and Russia.

and

4 – Polar bears are thought to have evolved from a brown bear ancestor some 200,000 years ago, but in spite of this, they do not hibernate!

It’s no joke that laughing is good for you!

Laughing is weird isn’t it? Sometimes you find yourself laughing and you’re not even sure why. This semester, as part of a science communication class I had to talk about whatever science topic I chose, and laughter was what I went with. I loved the topic so much; I decided to give it to you as a blog.

This is how I picture my friends (if i had any) and I laughing – blurry and on the floor. Photo via Flickr

Laughter comes from the intercostal muscles between your ribs – they also help you breath. Pretty important really, they also help us talk which is a little less important, but still pretty helpful. Laughter can reduce stress, boost your immune system, and even potentially help you live longer. Sounds pretty magical really!

A lot of people think humans are the only animals that laugh, but that’s just not true, it’s been well documented in rats and primates as well, usually associated with things like playing, and tickling, but more importantly – its associated with interactions. If I asked you when you laugh the most you’d tell me something like while watching comedy, at jokes, when I’m with friends, but really the important take home message here is that you laugh most when you are with other people, and it doesn’t even have to involve humour. Because laughing with people says you understand them, you agree with them, you like them, you’re part of their group, and laughter carries an incredible amount of emotional information, without you ever having to say anything.

I know this ostrich isn’t laughing but it does look like it’s just told the sickest joke and all its ostrich buddies are crying/laughing. Photo via Flickr

Laughter is also incredibly contagious, like yawning, but you’re more likely to ‘catch’ laughter off someone if you know them, and in every situation that you hear laughter, you’re searching for meaning – be it other people laughing on the street or two of your friends laughing. Studies between the cognitive ability of children and adults to understand laughter show that it isn’t until your late 30s early 40s that you start to understand laughter properly. As we age and understand laughter better, it also becomes less contagious to us, children and young teenagers are much more likely to ‘catch’ laughter than an older person, and everyone is more likely to ‘catch’ laughter from an involuntary laugh over a posed laugh.

By the way, I’m sure you guys don’t need this explained, but a posed laugh is more like the polite chuckle you give your friends when you don’t find their joke funny but you like them so you laugh anyway, and an involuntary laugh is that take your breath away, can’t talk right now laugh that sometimes just consumes you and your friends and you all just have to sit on the floor for a moment.

What a cheesy grin this dog has, makes me smile (contagious grinning??). Photo via Flickr

Laughter is also a ‘social glue’ between friends, family, and within romantic relationships. I can vividly remember when I was younger riding my bike up and down a dirt pile at a construction site with my brother (not sure why mum and dad let us go there). I went to do a massive jump, which in reality was probably tiny, but by 8 year old Kate’s standards it was wicked big, and I stacked it. I looked up, before I even knew if I was hurt or not, I heard my brother laughing at me, and it made me laugh too. Involuntary laughter took a situation that wasn’t at all humorous, diffused the tension, and made it totally ok for us to continue riding out bikes no harm done. And situations like this happen between friends every day. I’m sure we all have one. Studies (like this one) have shown that couples who get through arguments and issues by laughing together will stay together longer and report higher levels of satisfaction with one another.

Often when you laugh with people, it’s connecting you to them in a way that says, we’re together, we’re ok, and it’s going to be ok, which is why we often laugh in stressful or emotional situations that aren’t at all funny. We find laughter in the most mundane of things, my friends cat died last week (that’s not the joke) and I was sitting with her that evening, we went to 24hr Kmart to wander around (as you do?) and I remember doing a lot of idiot things to make my friend laugh, to almost illicit a feeling between us that said “you’re laughing, so I can see that you’re going to be ok”. So laughter, while it is so often consciously connected to humour in our minds, is really subconsciously more about building social relationships and understanding.

With the power of laughter to make you healthier, strengthen your relationships, and make the people around you feel better – why wouldn’t you want to start cracking jokes and heading to comedy shows on a Friday night?

This is a blog post about memes. I’m not even going to try and hide it.

Everyone in the world loves a good meme, and everyone’s ideas on what a good meme are vary widely, but we love them none the less. Why is this? Well, science might have the answer!

Classic Boromir ‘One does not simply…’ meme – image via quickmeme

To begin with, lets delve into what makes a meme; the most common memes are your well known ‘advice animals’ such as Success Kid, Scumbag Steve, and Socially Awkward Penguin that everyone will have seen at least once. These memes are usually short and punchy text with distinct meaning pertaining to the image. Then you get your video memes like Double Rainbow (god I hope people remember this one and I’m not actually so bloody old no one knows it) and the other beautiful hits by Songify This, or HEYYEYAAEYAAAEYAEYAA. Followed by the last category of memes which don’t have an official name, but I’m going to call them ‘others’ (genius aren’t I), these can be anything from posts on me_irl, Nihilist memes, or even our own glorious Melbourne Uni Stalker Space (which we all need to do more stalking on please) you get the idea. Whatever your sense of humour, there’s a meme out there for you.

Now, you’re probably thinking to yourself ‘Kate, this is a science blog, can you give me some science and stop talking about memes? Are you really this sad?’ well yes, yes I am that sad. But also here is some science, so shut up and keep reading and then leave some cool comments that facilitate discussion so I get dem tasty H1s. I’m so sorry.

Anyway… scientists have started delving into what makes a meme popular, why things go viral, and how this could be extrapolated to predict what will go viral next. Which is good news if you want to advertise something because maybe science can tell you how to do a good job (unlike you The Blind Factory, no one likes your radio ads, STOP IT). The science of memes or ‘memetic theory’ looks into these burning questions, and suggests that memes compete in a Darwinian type battle where they compete for reproduction (sharing), and evolve as time goes on, I wish I was joking.   A common way of describing this is by using the spoked wheel theory – where one person makes a spoked wheel wagon, another sees it and replicates it. Three more people see these two wagons and the process continues until there are hundreds of wagons. Coming up with a spoked wheel might have been easy in the earlier days of the internet where the coolest meme was a lolcat, but now we’re spoilt for choice, there’s a lot of spoked wheel concepts around, which ones do we all choose to replicate?

Us too Mugatu – image via Quickmeme

So again, what makes a meme go viral? Well memetic theory suggests that to go viral a meme should be interesting, simple, catchy, funny, and engaging. Which seems to make sense, but it doesn’t account for differences in taste, demographic, or culture which could all make marked impacts on whether a meme spreads in a particular area or not. To me, the ideal meme is one that is funny, simple, and relatable or one that is completely nonsensical (here comes dat boi).

Tell me, class of 2016, what are your favourite memes, and why?

Fieldwork Fun

Hello lovely blog readers, this fortnight I’m somewhere around the Mallee/Wimmera regions doing field work. Here are some photos from last week, I’ll be back next fortnight with another blog post!

Sunrise at Hallah-Kulkyne National Park

Another shot of the sunrise at Hattah

Absolutely stunning pink salt lakes at Murray-Sunset National Park

I hadn’t seen a Major Mitchells Cockatoo in the wild before and managed to catch a cheeky picture of this cutie having a meal! It’s a bit blurry but I did what I could with the phone camera.

Yours truely, I got bogged at Murray-Sunset and ate a banana

17 Reasons Stress Is Not So Great (#9 Will Shock You!!)

Stress is a state of mind that more and more young people, between ages 18-35, are finding themselves in. But is it always an involuntary choice? Or has society started to glamorize stress?

This fortnight is another blog post from my university blog posts. Original post by me can be found here.

This is a lovely meadow with pretty wildflowers, perfect for a unicorn to gambol about in joyfully. Image by Joe Mabel via Flickr

We all know stress is not great for you, having widely known negative consequences like weight loss, weight gain, hair loss, or increased blood pressure resulting in a higher risk of heart attack, lots of things you don’t really want to happen. But did you know it can also potentially degrade your brain, make you more vulnerable to getting sick, enhance depression, and even lead to long term health problems for you and your unborn baby if you’re pregnant? With all these potential medical issues arising from stress, why does it seem like it’s almost a badge of honor to be the most stressed of your friends?

Recent surveys seem to show that stress levels on the whole are decreasing, but remain far too high in young people ages 18-35, and it’s no wonder when you look at the rise in cost of living, housing, and unemployment. Millennials are branded lazy, and entitled by our elders, like we want everything handed to us on a platter, but we all know that’s not the case. My parents bought their first home when they were in their mid-20s (I’m already behind, sorry mum and dad), my older brother was a new born baby so mum didn’t work and dad had a full time job managing a hotel. The house wasn’t glamorous but it was within 45 minutes’ drive of the CBD and had 3 bedrooms and a decent backyard. I don’t think I’m alone in saying that all millennials really want is to be able to own a home like that on a single income without needing 10 degrees to get the job in the first place, a small fortune of a deposit, and several sacrificial goats.

This unicorn is a failure in the eyes of its parents. It works at Coles full time on the check out and cannot afford to furnish it’s bleak looking 1br apartment with anything other than a table. The unicorn is running out of hope and is stressed because it always thought it would live in some glorious meadow like the picture up there but the housing market is awful and it just cant afford that sort of lavish accommodations. Image by Giles Alexander via Flickr

So what does this mean? Well to me it means that stress is an unfortunate fact of life for young people today. But more and more often I hear people over coffees comparing stress, just yesterday I was at the Pancake Parlour with a friend for some midnight gossip (and chocolate chip pancakes) and hear two other girls saying something along the lines of Girl 1: “I’m so stressed this week, there’s just so many deadlines looming I’m worried I won’t meet them all” Girl 2: “That’s nothing, I *wish* I only had deadlines to worry about, I have all of these deadlines, and my cat is sick, and I’m broke this week, and my boyfriend broke up with me” Girl 1: “oh wow you win!”. Why? Why does Girl 2 win? Why is being so busy that you’re overloading yourself and stressing to the point of potentially serious medical issues winning?

The simple fact is, is that stress is bad for you, being stressed and overworked isn’t something to aspire to, it isn’t cool, chique, or impressive to be doing potentially irreparable damage to your body. Yet it seems more and more apparent that as a generation so in touch with social media we see a need to compare lives with others, subconsciously or not, whether those comparisons are who has the most friends, who has the most likes on their selfie, or who is drowning the most in stress.

If you, or your friends are suffering from prolonged stress it is important that you get help; see your regular GP for a health check and tips on how to minimize stress in your life, and next time your friend is venting about some stress, don’t be Girl 2, just listen to them and help them, if you need to vent your own problems you’ll have your turn. Because stress isn’t cool, it’s actually really, really bad.