Some short profiles of the people being driven to insanity day and night as they work on your student magazine this year.

Editors

Name: Alex McClintock
Course: Bachelor or Arts in Communication (Journalism) & in International Studies (Spanish) II
Personal statement: After doing nothing special at school, Alex took an unremarkable gap year in Europe. He understands and shares your limited life experience. Faced with a challenge, he may or may not rise to meet it.

Name: Bonita Silva
Course: Bachelor of Arts in Communication (Journalism) & Bachelor of Laws (III)
Personal statement: Bonita is a musician who is still recovering from Sirius Black’s death in Harry Potter. She also sleepwalks and sleeptalks and believes Madonna should stop assaulting the unsuspecting public in her increasingly revealing leotards.

Name: David Bennett (Dave)
Course: Bachelor of Arts in Communication (Writing and Cultural studies) & in International Studies (French) III
Personal Statement: David was a myrmecologist as a child and will defend the rights of geeks, nerds, literature-film-theatre-music lovers and those who are more artistically inclined. He is the spawn-child of the radioactive cesspit that once existed on the UTS Tower construction site and has Francophile tendencies (Baguette).

Name: Donna Yan
Course: Bachelor of Arts in Communication (Writing and Cultural Studies) II
Personal Statement: Donna is unremarkable in every way except for her unhealthy fear of deadlines. She decided to try and cure herself by becoming a Vertigo editor which has proven that she is not only unremarkable but also delusional. She now spends most of her time in a foetal position in the Vertigo office trying to figure out the difference between a pitch deadline and a copy deadline.

Name: Jade Tyrrell
Course: Bachelor of Arts in Communication (Journalism) & Bacherlor of Laws III
Personal Statement: Jade secretly wishes she could jump into the pages of Pride and Prejudice, do away with Elizabeth Bennett and have Mr Darcy all to herself. She’s just not sure she could give up the freedom to wear pants…plus, voting’s pretty cool.

Name: Julian Dibley-Hall (Julz)
Course: Bachelor of Arts in Communication (Writing and Cultural Studies) II
Personal Statement: Julian is a writer from Sydney’s inner west. He enjoys long walks on the beach and being scratched behind the ears. He is looking for 40,000 students for one-year, open relationship, for friendship or love.

Name: Kahla Preston
Course: Bachelor of Arts in Communication (Journalism) & in International Studies (French) II
Personal Statement: Kahla has an unfortunate habit of falling in love with men who are fictional and/or dead, and longs for the day that James Dean is reincarnated. She owns more hats than clean pairs of socks and has been known to consume entire blocks of chocolate in a single sitting.

Name: Patrick “Spiderlegs” Catanzariti
Course: Bachelor of Information Technology III
Personal statement: Patrick was born and raised in the tubes of the Internet. Having repressed a great deal of the traumatic memories seen and heard in his early years crawling the web, Patrick now lives a relatively normal life while still struggling with a real world free of hyperlinks.

Name: Sophie Jeliba
Course: Bachelor of Arts in Communication (Journalism) & Bachelor of Laws III
Personal statement: Sophie’s surname is so frequently pronounced incorrectly, she once pronounced it wrong herself. She edits Vertigo to forget the humiliation, and heal the pain.

Bloggers

Name: Clare Evans
Course: Bachelor of Journalism
Personal Statement: Born British and therefore devoid of all pigment, Clare has endured a lifetime of misplacement and cruel comparisons to a certain friendly ghost. This has left her not so friendly, ala Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars, or the stripy yellow creep from Where’s Wally? Clare suppresses this pain by playing “Chilli Chicken”, which is basically a game she invented where you see how many chillies you can eat in one sitting before your face burns off. Olympic contract pending.

Design Team

Name: Linda Hoang
Course: Bachelor of Design in Visual Communication
Personal statement: Linda is a designer who appears to have adopted the office as a second home. As such she can usually be found clicking away at her computer or else hoping that the loose ceiling board above her doesn’t suddenly decide to drop down for a visit.