Time is flying and i'm not having any fun!

You know the old saying "Time flies when you're having fun". Well, it's not just when you're having fun, it's also when you need a couple of hours of rest, and when you have deadlines looming, and when you're trying to get ready to go out. Time flies by me all the time, and i don't seem to be getting any of the fun!

Actually, no, that's not entirely true. Last night i did get a night off from writing Shorthand, busting my gut to write an album review on the complete opposite of my taste in music and keeping on top of all the demands on me. I got to go to my very first gig at Manchester Academy, Academy 2. I have been to a concert before (in my defence music has never been a huge passion in my life), but never to a gig and my friend Maz thought that insane when he first found out. He vowed to take me to the first gig i would agree to and that happened to be folk-pop singer Lissie.

I have to say, she was amazing and it was the perfect gig to ease me in. There was no moshing (well, one fifty year-old was trying it but nobody was encouraging him!), there was a bit of dancing, it was upbeat and fun at a nice venue. The gig only lasted just over an hour but it was so enjoyable and this time, time really did fly while i was having fun!

I am going to be writing a review of the gig for the Student Direct: Salford Edition and think i might show it to my lecturer who thought my last review only good enough to just scrape a pass. The more time passes, the more bitter i get about the whole affair!

Then, 8 tragically short hours of sleep later i was up and out the door for my very first Reporting class, where i was joining an MA class. That was nerve-wracking! I was so sure they were simply going to turn on me as i entered the room and screech at me to leave! But they were so lovely, very welcoming, and i even had a cup of tea made for me!

The class was also extremely useful, very informative. There was a guest speaker today, a chap from the NCTJ marking people and he talked us through a sample people because this is the first year of this Reporting section of the diploma (it used to be News Writing, but this is more of a multimedia paper now). He went into so much detail that i feel completely prepared for the paper and like i could do it tomorrow if asked to!

In the next two days i want to finish my feature, tomorrow night i have another gig to go to, this time for my assignment due in next week and it is the Halloween weekend which means time for writing up this gig is slim so it's going to be a busy few days! Still, all in the name of bettering myself eh?

Over and out!

Gemma

Biggest Interview of my Career

Twelve hours ago i woke up to a dreary, wet Manchester morning but i was not perturbed. I had a spring in my step because today was the day i got to interview the Head of BBC North, Peter Salmon.

My mood was dampened slightly by a very poor mark in a Music Journalism album review but i was not going to let anything get me down. Even the persistence of the rain as i stepped outside an hour later. Within minutes my feet were soaked and i discovered that my boots leaked. And yet, there was still a smile on my face.

By this point i was getting a little nervous and when i'm nervous i go one of two ways- i either go much louder to over-compensate or i shrink into myself. Today i chose hiding away as i shook the hand of the university Press Officer, a man from the BBC and many others who i failed to catch the name of.

Then Peter Salmon walked in and i didn't know what to do. Editor Emily had just briefly left the room and i had sat at a table. I watched as he was introduced to the others in the room and i felt completely out of place. I just stayed back and hoped nobody noticed i was invading on their very grown-up meeting!

Emily returned, we were introduced to Peter and then taken upstairs to where fellow students had set up equipment. We sat in the background and took notes while Peter was filmed for the university and a student project for twenty minutes then it was our turn.

Emily had originally said that i would ask most of the questions but we had sat down, turned on our dictaphones and then i had completely forgotten everything i wanted to ask! So Emily very deftly too control of the situation. Unfortunately we only had five minutes so Emily asked a few questions, i got one very important question in and then that was it. Peter Salmon was swept away to the next important meeting and we were left in someone's office in the wake.

I then came into my element, got chatting to the other students and recognised a few from my features class. I even managed to get them to promise to write a few features for me, they were very impressed that i was Features Editor so i felt much better about myself by the time i left the room!

Once again i have failed to do any Shorthand. Must rectify that now!

Over and out!

Gemma

The Black Hole of the weekend!

Well, today is Monday and has been very busy with tasks but the weekend was a lot less productive to the point of no productivity at all! You know how it is, you write a to-do list, adamant that by Sunday evening you will have completed it, then you turn on the TV Saturday afternoon for the football and suddenly it's Sunday evening and you've watched several episodes of Come Dine With Me, the whole of the f1 qualifying and race, three football games, all of X Factor and Xtra Factor and now it's the results and you can't possibly miss them!

The Black Hole that is the weekend has consumed all of your time and you have none left to practice some Shorthand or write a draft of your feature. So Monday morning came, almost no work done whatsoever (there was a TV lull between the football finishing and Come Dine With Me starting so i'd done a quick draft of my feature) and of course i felt so guilty i had to get up early despite it being my one chance at a lie-in for the week and do some work.

Except nobody had emailed me back about the campaign idea, i hadn't heard anything from the lady at the local paper back down South about work experience and had no desire to get out of bed to sit struggling to write Shorthand about the Teletubbies (apparently children's TV is slower with less complicated words so is ideal for perfecting Shorthand).

The afternoon however was much more productive. I left my computer for all of thirty minutes between leaving home and travelling to university and was greeted by three emails. Two were helping me with the disabled access campaign and the third brought very good news indeed! I have secured myself a one week placement at the Kent and Sussex Courier for the Christmas holidays. Unfortunately one week is all they could offer with so many looking for experience but it is the week leading up to Christmas so it is going to be extremely busy and i will hopefully get a lot out of the experience!

After printing my poor excuse for a first draft of the feature i then met with my feature teacher who was impressed, laughed at all the appropriate places and gave some great advice for how to take it a little further. One week until that is due, i'm feeling very confident about that.

Then, a quick rush to the other side of campus for a meeting with Editor Emily about doing a front page story which will take centre stage in my NCTJ Portfolio. For this story i have to interview the Head of BBC North, Peter Salmon!!! I am very very nervous about the interview but thankfully it is not all alone, more like a group interview but Emily got us in on it and we've been given permission to ask him questions so it should be a great experience! That is happening tomorrow morning so there really is no time to panic about it because it will all be over by this time tomorrow!

Final task for the day was an interview with a fellow student about his experience of being semi-disabled in our university accommodation which by all accounts sounds pretty tough! He was really helpful and the campaign assignment feels like it is coming along really well.

I am constantly amazed at how together my life feels at the moment. All my assignments seem to be coming together in plenty of time, i'm stressing about one in particular and am managing the stress i am harbouring so all is good! Of course, having said that, something is bound to go hideously wrong so watch this space!!

Tomorrow brings with it the biggest interview of my 'career' to date, a long overdue lunchtime catch-up with a friend, writing up the front page of next week's uni paper and i should probably squeeze some Shorthand in there at some point!

Over and out!

Gemma

The shortest interview ever

Hey,

Well today's journalistic tasks were to harass lots of people for information, utilise the internet for facts and figures for an article and conduct an interview. All were achieved but to varying degrees of success!

First was the interview which was for my campaign journalism assignment. The idea is to create a newspaper campaign for a local paper and conduct interviews which get to the heart of the story. My idea is a campaign to get improved disabled facilities in the university accommodation and the interview was with a guy i know of who is in a wheelchair which would really help the article. The trouble was i was completely unprepared, had some questions in my head but none written down so ended up forgetting half of them and after ten minutes the interview was over.

Granted, i did get a few good quotes and the interview is at least usable but it doesn't do much for ones confidence when an interview is finished before the drink i ordered was! And yet the interview i had done days previously with none other than Miss Manchester 2010, Elicia Davies lasted an hour and only ended because she had a prior engagement to get to. So i am not too disheartened but slightly!

The second task of the day was to email a lot of people about the same article since i have been getting nowhere with anybody. Well, this was slightly more successful, i at least got a response with one lady who has promised to set up a meeting once she is in her office next week.

And the third task was to collect facts and figures for both the campaign article and the feature article for which i was interviewing Miss Manchester. The feature article was originally going to be about the dying age of pageantry in the UK but having spoken to Miss Manchester i am inclined to change my opinion and the figures i found supported this. So having found dozens of interesting facts about the popularity of pageant competitions i was feeling very confident about the feature article and will attempt a first draft this weekend.

Unfortunately facts and figures about disabled access in universities across the country are much harder to come by so one article is coming along nicely and the other seems to be stuck in the mud a little at the moment!

So, journalism tasks done for the day and the house to myself for the evening. And what am i gonna do with it?? Catch up on some well-earned sleep i think!!

Over and out!

Gemma

Day One of the rest of my life!

Hello,

Technically this is not the first day of the rest of my life because i have been studying Journalism and Sociology (strange mix i know, i'll get onto it later) at the University of Salford for two years now and started my third year four weeks ago.

But in many ways this is the first day of the rest of my life because this blog will be updated daily, no matter what i have been doing. I have found in the last four weeks that i have done something towards becoming a journalist every single day and so it seemed an appropriate time to start a blog all about my journey along the road towards becoming a journalist.

So, as the title suggests, many people wonder why i have chosen a career that is often low-paid, gets little recognition unless you are either extremely talented or extremely opinionated and is one of the most hated professions in modern times. Well, unfortunately i cannot say that i am extremely talented; talent comes with experience and i have little in real terms, nor am i extremely opinionated. Opinionated yes, but not extremely. Not yet anyway!

The answer is simple- when other teenagers were outside riding bikes around the local park and playing kiss chase (i only played once and knocked my two front teeth right out, never again!), i was sat indoors creating a newspaper all about 'So Little Time'- Mary-Kate and Ashley Olson's attempt at teen drama before they became real teenagers and truly discovered the opposite sex! I have always loved to write. Of course, at the age of 13 i was adamant that i would write the next Harry Potter and would be insanely rich by the age of 21. I am 21 now and still waiting for the insane richness to kick in! I had a momentary lapse of judgement at 14 when i decided i wanted to be an air stewardess but it was short-lived when i was told i would have to study French and German at GCSE level. Never going to happen.

So i reverted back to my roots of writing. And it hasn't really stopped since. Reading and writing has been my escape from an otherwise mundane life so when the careers advisor asked me what i wanted to do with my life the obvious answer was writing. She soon set me straight about my chances of writing a best-selling novel before leaving school but lead me to journalism courses.

I chose Salford University because it offered Shorthand as part of the course (of course i didn't realise that was only if i did Journalism as a straight course) and the rest, as they say, is history! I chose Sociology because i had done at A-Level- there were no other viable options for me to pick in all honesty- and discovered i was actually quite good at it. So i figured why not continue being good at it? Turns out sociologists blame most of society's problems on media saturation and sensationalism, hence the clashing course but i have not been perturbed and stuck with it.

And so we come to now. I am in my third year. I have studied reviewing, public relations, feature writing, news writing, music journalism and journalism in the context of everyday life. I am also in the process of learning everything i need to know to take my NCTJ's (National Council for the Training of Journalists exam), including a whole new language in Shorthand. I am Features Editor of the university paper- Student Direct: Salford Edition- for the second year running, i contribute regularly to www.unitown.co.uk and now i have this blog, as well as my modules for my final year.

But it keeps me busy, on my toes and prepares me for the real-life, day-to-day schedule of a journalist so i am very happy. There isn't a day goes by where i don't do something towards being a journalist so everyday i will tell you what i did that day. You'd be surprised how much work goes into saying how you feel about something!!

Over and out for now!!

Gemma