Personal essays

• Profess your undying love to someone (and name names).
• Interview your ex
• Tell us the thing about you which makes the least sense
• Explain why you never learnt to drive, to cook, to ride a bike, to swim…Defend yourself.
• God promised me a place at Oxford, do I deserve it?
• Write your own manifesto 
• Write about learning to ride a bike
• Do you care about personal essays?
• Defend Freudianism using a personal experience.
• Would you still love them if they were a worm?
• You’ve won your Oscar, make your speech…
• St. Peter isn’t going to let you in, how do you try to convince him you deserve a spot in Heaven?
• Defend cheating.
• Does everything happen for a reason?
• Do you want children? Why?
• What is the most pathetic reason you ended a relationship?
• Do you parents have a favourite child?

Comment

• Is a dry ham sandwich a stoic embrace of mediocrity?
• The overthrow of Assad 
• Which is more efficient, British rail or the Oxford SU?
• Defend bureaucracy.
• Where do you see Reform in 2029?
• Should America be welcoming Trump?
• Should we still care about Ukraine?
• Is there a point to hereditary peers?
• Should England have its own parliament?
• What will Elon Musk do next?
• Shouldn’t postgrads just get a job?
• What’s in it for Keir Starmer?
• Oh Jeremy Corbyn?
• Is print media over?
• Is there a defence of private education that doesn’t invoke choice?
• Is there an argument against private education that doesn’t invoke fairness?
• Trump 2024: Tragedy or Farce?
• What are we going to do about climate change, actually?
• Liberal America was always a myth. But will we miss it when it’s gone?
• Why is the far-right rising so rapidly across Europe now?
• Does TIME magazine’s person of the year matter?
• If pandas aren’t willing to procreate to save themselves, can we just let them go extinct already, they clearly don’t care.
• Are horoscopes a new religion?
• In a world without abortion rights, should there be mandatory vasectomies? 
• At what age do age gap relationships become acceptable?
• Am I responsible for your triggers?

Culture

• Defend a piece of art everyone else hates. Tell us why you’re right.
• Shit on one of the great artists of our age.
• Give us your family’s secret, sacred recipe. Why is cooking such an intimate/ personal act?
• Does the moral character of an orgy change when the participants wear Nazi uniforms?
• Was Evelyn Waugh a snob? 
• Justify being illiterate 
• Where would you rather holiday, Club Tropicana or Copacabana?
• A history of kink
• Are Fontaines DC actually the best band of our generation?
• Are Fontained DC actually the worst band of our generation?
• Are Fontaines DC worth talking about at all?
• Defend celebrity novels 
• Does Private Eye have a grip of British satire or is it just the same old shit?
• I’m getting fairly sick of Barry Keoghan, are you?
• Why is CalSoc so English? (Is CalSoc the new Bullingdon?)
• You don’t just read your favourite chapter of Normal People and then your favourite chapter of Middlemarch over and over, so why listen to playlists?
• Why not just get the train to London or Bristol for every night out?
• Is the Classics degree a thing of the past? (ha)
• Taylor Swift. Discuss.
• Does brainrot matter?
• Why do people like Rupi Kaur?
• Is autofiction on its way out?
• Is the album truly dead? If so: how could we, and should we, bring it back to life?
• Should you separate the art from the artist?
• Has ‘therapy talk’ ruined communication? 
• Would you take The Substance?

Fiction

• Rewrite the ending to a play/ book/ film /series you were disappointed with.
• Imagine your life without [your favourite thing]
• A rat on a sinking ship
• Write about a night out at the pub
• Write about the guy you used to serve at the pub
• Create a ranking using corrupt logic
• Tell us a story with no narrator
• Write a poem. Invent your own rhyme scheme
• Write a poem in iambic pentameter
• What’s the weirdest possible metaphor for your situationship? (My love is like a Najar’s wrap… hot and cold and occasionally slimy)
• Write a sonnet
• Remember that urban legend at your school that everyone swore was true? Write a story about it. Take it incredibly seriously 
• Rewrite your tutorial as a Shakespearean comedy
• Write a story set in the Glink 
• Write a poem that cures homesickness. 
• Write a poem with no line breaks
• Make it old
• Write a short story that doesn’t look like a short story
• Do a pastiche of Seamus Heaney
• Make me nervous
• Your life, from the perspective of everyone else.
• Get back in contact with your imaginary friend, have a conversation about what’s been going on since you last saw them. 
• Do a ‘Genius’ style lyric analysis on a song you wrote as a child
• Analyse one of your diary entries like you’re in a GCSE English exam.

Art

• Send us a piece of art you think we wouldn’t like
• Show us that collage should be taken more seriously 
• Send us what you created and explain why you don’t like it
• Send us what you created and explain why you do like it
• Challenge us with a photograph 
• Prove to us student photographers at Oxford don’t just photograph the pretty buildings
• Create a piece of art borne out of your frustration with these pitch prompts
• Show us that any of the writing prompts can be better explored visually (can this one come last slide and last in the list please)
• Ruskin students: send us an artwork that makes you most proud to be a fine artist 
• STEM/Humanities students: send us an artwork that makes you think you should have done fine art 
• Send us something incomplete
• Send us something you completed a long time ago