Rachel Lavin | Magazine Editor
If you look to the top of this frame you will see one of the ugliest mascots that ever existed. This is Zardoz, and he is the tradition handed down by past editor Tommy Gavin. This isn’t some ancient tradition, it’s perhaps about three years old but considering The University Times itself is only six, that’s half our lifetime. So should we keep one of our only traditions or trade it in for a cute pug in a top hat or something? For weeks we debated this heady issue, what to do with Zardo? Every creative editor’s worst nightmare, there was simply nothing that could be done. Either accept its undeniable ugliness or chuck it.
About this time we began thinking of themes for our first issue and settled upon ‘fresh perspectives’ asking writers and editors to take a fresh look at their college experience and beyond. My own college experience however was certainly uncomfortable to take a fresh look at. No year was the same. I cruised through first year out in Halls, making friends and joining societies, but in second year got caught up in the worst parts of Trinity culture; the social climbing, status obsession and egotistical popularity particularly prevalent in the societies I was involved with. In third year I had gotten a coveted society position and felt I was finally where I wanted to be, or at least was meant to, except it somehow felt empty. And then I got sick.
Dropping out due to a serious illness had many side effects and one of them was the most rude awakening to the fickle culture in Trinity I had left behind. Few of the peers I had idolised even noticed I had disappeared. The many friends I thought I had failed to contact me. The insignificance of what I had been trying to achieve suddenly became clear. Returning to repeat third year I detested the place, associating it with all the negative experiences and disappointments that had gone before. I got through it because of my good friends but returning this year after they have graduated, the prospect of a fifth freshers week after four tumultuous years, was not exactly filling me with joy.
I mulled over this in the weeks coming up to the magazine as submissions began to come in. In the issue we took a fresh perspective on the fickle nature of our hatred towards each other in Sinead Baker’s Red Hot interview with Thomas Knights. We visited the Amish of Waterford to find out about their old-fashioned life and what we could learn anew from it. We also asked the five sabbats, often lauded as holding the highest ‘positions’ in Trinity, to look at their own four years afresh. Here you’ll read sweet sentiments, regrets, funny anecdotes and a multitude of perspectives that show that, far from the shiny image we are portrayed, your four years at college can be just as difficult and as complex as for those we perceive to be at the top of their game. And finally we hear the story of Salem who came all the way from bomb-shelled Gaza to Trinity College.
This content was selected not just because of its quality but as editor I get the special privilege of selecting which pieces go to print and these four features are for me a sweet example of the lessons I need to incorporate into my own fresh perspective of the coming year; to see the petty ways we judge each other and the benefits of throwing them off. That I am in no way unique in the struggles or difficulties I faced in college, even the best of us have problems that are unique to us all and finally, to stop complaining; there are far worse off than me and far more grateful.
So I decided to take my own advice and take a fresh perspective on my final year. And in that same vein, we also solved the Zardoz problem. We decided to take the ugly old thing we were tired of looking at, and add a silver border lining.
Zardoz Illustration: Laura Finnegan
Frame Illustration: Caoilainn Scouler
A version of this piece was published in issue one of UTzine.
