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The name on my diploma when I graduate in December won’t be my name.

Well, it will be my legal name – the name I was given by my parents – but it’s not the name I go by.

don’t relate to it at all and if you were to call it out on the street, I’d say 99 times out of a 100 I wouldn’t actually respond. It just isn’t me.

All through school I hated this; it was a massive pain whenever we had substitute teachers, as it would be my legal name on the roll rather than my everyday name. At the start of every year I had to correct my teachers in every single class. Anytime I enrolled in something. On my driver’s licence. And now, on my degree.

You might say “get over it! Just use your name, it’s a beautiful name” as some do. Or tell me to just change it.

I’m definitely at the stage where I’m starting to consider it. And if I’m going to do it, the sooner the better I suppose, because the older I get the more documentation I’m going to have with my old name on it and the more difficult it will be to organise.

So why haven’t I pulled the plug? I don’t know. I guess it feels like a bit of a rejection of the name my parents took the time and trouble to choose. The cost – and paperwork involved in doing so is putting me off.  And although realistically, it’s not going to have much of an impact in my day-to-day life, apart from making it a little simpler, it feels like a BIG change.
Have any of you gone through anything similar?

One thing that grates on my nerves is when guys insult other guys by calling them feminine. eg, “You run/throw/dress like a girl”. I live with a bunch of, shall we say, “guys’ guys” who pride themselves on their masculinity, so I hear those kinds of things a lot.

At the same time, I remember in PE class only being able to throw a tennis ball a pathetic seven metres, while the guys were averaging 30+metres. Never mind – I kicked ass  at the beep test, so I made up for my lack of muscl :P.

Anyway, I accept that generally men are more physically capable than women, but that doesn’t make it okay to use females to deride other guys.

It makes me recall when my dad scoffed at me for joining the soccer team (an inappropriate sport for girls). Sure, I was terrible at soccer but I got a kick (ha) out of it, and I DON’T like being told what I can and can’t do, especially when it comes from someone who not only thinks girls, but single mothers/sex workers/gays are inferior human beings. *breathes*

Thoughts? Good old fashioned chauvinism or just the cold hard truth?

A few things have got me on a bit of a downer. For instance, my mum telling me about how she met up with a friend from PRIMARY school (pretty neat, if you remember anything at all about each other after 40 years?) who now has pancreatic cancer. And she’s all alone – her kids are overseas and her husband’s working in Africa. Imagine going through something like that by yourself.

I also came to realise that my “big” cousins – who were all 20something when I was a freshfaced wee thing on the cusp of adolescence – are now in their thirties with careers, families and houses. Now, I’M that 20something cousin to the little ones! How, and when, did that happen????

Finally, one of our flatmates – he was actually crashing with us for the last month or so at the old house. He’s lovely and good-natured and always smiling. But he is not the brightest crayon in the box. a) he has terrible luck and b) he makes stupid choices.

He’s racked up so much debt. First he was given $10,000 on his 18th birthday, went and bought a ridiculous car, and it was all downhill from there). He had a series of car crashes, clung on to a relationship with a total wackjob, racked up a ton of traffic fines… He’s been out of work all year after an injury, and relies on his single dad for help quite a bit. They all seem really close knit – him, the dad, his little sister, and his nana; he has a framed photo of him and his grandma next to his bed. (His bed, inside the big windowless walk-in closet off the hall…. but at least he’s not paying a full share of rent.)  Yeah, I don’t know why, but it’s really getting to me – it’s such a shame.