Progress

As much as i would love this to be about the new Take That album, it is not. No, this is about my progress. Because journalism was such a huge learning curve for me, having written essays all my life then being told i had to throw all the rules of essay writing out of the window for articles, any progress is a huge achievement for me.

When i first started learning shorthand i thought it was going to be impossible for me to ever be able to write it fluently. But the strangest thing is happening. As i am writing this the outlines are popping up in my head, i'm hearing people talk and in my head i am writing the outline. Many would think that this was simply me being slightly mental but for the shorthand elite out there i'm sure you can understand how important this is. In the past two days i have had 6 hours of shorthand and although it has been exhausting it has also finally started to click the whole language into place.

After two and a half hours of shorthand today my brain was shutting down and my mood was darkening.So instead of forcing onwards i sat back for ten minutes, watched others in class doing dictation and writing the outlines in my head and taking note of the words i couldn't work out quickly enough. Then i decided to try the last piece of dictation. We started at 60 words per minute and ordinarily, due to lack of regular dictation, i have big gaps where i have forgotten what was said. But this time it flowed. Words which would usually catch me out just wrote themselves. I was writing the word as it was being said which is a very new experience for me. Then we tried it at 80 words per minute and again i completed the whole passage. Finally we tried it at 100 words per minute and to my complete and utter shock i completed that one without any gaps. Admittedly upon the third time of hearing the passage i am bound to remember it better but the fact that i could still be on the pace is a huge step forward for me.

Now all i need is for everyone to take down the exam passage ten minutes before me then for me to do it since it was that which cleared my head!!

Next week sees the long awaited return of the Student Direct: Salford Edition and i get to write my favourite article of the year- an opinion piece on how much i hate Valentine's Day!! This year i have even more reason than usual to hate it, other than the usual being alone and the commercialism of the whole thing. This year i have an exam on the day of the cursed "holiday" AND the day after as well. So even if i wanted to celebrate it, i couldn't possibly.

Still, I am very much looking forward to suggesting to the readers the top ten things to do on your anti-Valentine's night. Any suggestions are welcome :)

I read on Twitter today a tweet saying that in a journalism class of 40, when asked who knew nothing about what was happening Egypt, 20 students raised their hands. Half the class of future media professionals had no clue about the huge uproar against the dictatorship, about the fatalities and the constant riots. I find that absolutely shocking. I admit sometimes news stories pass me by, i have a long day at university and the last thing i want to do is trawl through several newspapers or websites to find out what i missed but i never fail to catch the BBC News at 6 or 10 and i always try to read the top stories before i go to bed. I urge anyone that is reading this and wants to be a journalist to follow suit because there is nothing more embarrassing than admitting you don't know what is going on in the world you live in.

Thanks for reading, follow me on Twitter @gemmathejourno

:)

Examitis

I haven't written anything for a few weeks because i had one exam which i went nuts revising for! One week before the exam i decided to start properly revising for it, which is my usual system and hadn't failed me up until now, but this time it was not enough. I was in the library, in the silent zone (a heavenly place where crisps are not eaten, phones are not vibrating and even the slightest noise gets scowled at!) for at least six hours every day. Hundreds of flashcards and the biggest blister i've ever had on my finger later and it was time for the exam.

A few subjects had come up while i was revising that i simply thought would not come up on the exam, one of which was what happened to treasure. I read the single page written about it and thought that it was unlikely to come up in a court reporting exam. Sadly, it did. Luckily it was only one part of the question so tried to remember what i had read, but to little avail.

That one slip up aside i feel that i did enough to pass the exam, thankfully. £44 for an exam means that i am loathe to pay for it again and spend another week of my life learning quotes from Lord Justice Diplock, McCollum, Watkins or whoever else! So hopefully when the results come in the next few weeks it will be good news!

Until then, there are more exams to revise for. The other half of the journalism law exam is on Valentine's Day and then the NCTJ Reporting exam is the following day. I have allowed myself this week off from revision, instead choosing to remind myself how to write in shorthand and making preparations for our house party.

House party of course took priority in the last few days. Friday saw the night of the party and at 10pm we were worried that were still only a handful of guests. I had been telling myself that this was normal for a house party because it is but even i was nervous at this point. Then, as usual, everyone arrived at once and by 11pm the house was bulging with people. Unfortunately 6 and half hours later the house was still bulging and i was desperately tired! By 6am everyone had eventually left, thirty minutes later i was fast asleep and by 10am i was up again taking care of my guests!

A long winded drive around Manchester and Salford, a mountain of bacon and egg sandwiches and a vat of tea later everyone was happy and leaving. Then came the clean-up operation! Having only had four hours sleep i was not in the mood for mopping up the vodka jelly that had somehow gotten everywhere!

Yesterday went in a blur of reading, napping and watching TV in bed. Eleven hours sleep later and i was fully recovered from the weeks antics. Today's plan is to practice some shorthand (now that i am in the MA's class i feel a little more dedicated to the extra hours of work a week!) and do the last of the cleaning which thankfully isn't much.

Then tomorrow, two weeks until the exam, revision must start again just as semester two classes begin, just to make it that little bit harder eh?

Post-holiday blues

Well Christmas holidays are technically over and of course that means the onset of exams and more people on Facebook during the day writing statuses asking why they didn't pay attention in lectures, if it were possible to invent the pen in Harry Potter that gives the right answer or the latest in procrastination theory.

And this time i join them. I had been looking forward to being one of the lucky few that did so much work during the term that i did not have exams but then i realised that taking NCTJ classes means at some point i would have to take NCTJ exams. I have been doing NCTJ classes for two years now and have left it to the last term to take the exams. So here i am, writing another blog entry rather than revising because it would seem that even paying for an exam and having to do so again if i fail is STILL not enough motivation for me to revise.

In the past week i have written approximately ten flashcards about Contempt of Court and i see no more flashcards in my immediate future. Why is revision so difficult to do? Once i get started i am happy to sit down and write out dozens of flashcards telling me that section 4 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 gives me a defence for writing extraneous articles as long as they are contemporaneous and in good faith. Well look at that, i learnt something! And yet, the motivation to stop watching re-runs of Friends and Come Dine With Me, get out of bed, switch Facebook off and open McNae's 'Essential Law for Journalists' is severely lacking.

I am destined to fail this exam and pay another £44 for the privilege of trying again in 3 months or feel the burn when i sit in an interview and explain that no, i did not take my NCTJ's because i was learning how to cook a rack of lamb on Masterchef!

And shorthand. That pesky little language that i am supposed to practise every day for thirty minutes else i won't be able to take my 60 words per minute in March, let alone 70 or 80. So by my estimation i have neglected to do approximately 15 hours of practise and have a class tomorrow morning in which i will be competing with the MA's who work 9-5 every day and in their lunch breaks discuss the best way to shorten sentences in order to pass the 100 exam in March!!

Okay well, i have definitely panicked myself into some sort of action now so i am definitely going to do something pro-active with my afternoon. Oh wait- Man United vs Spurs in 45 minutes? Ok, after that i'll do something. Promise. ;)

Holidays = Lulls

Well Christmas and New Year have been and gone and i have not written a single thing in longer than i care to remember. The worst part about this is that there is always so much to write about at this time of year and i've just watched it pass me by!

I could have written about the serious decline in soap Christmas stories, taken a look back at 2010 and what's to come in 2011, or just generally talked about world events- England retaining the Ashes, Darts over the New Year, the flooding in Queensland, the lack of water in Ireland, the poor girl found murdered on Christmas Day.

But alas, i have not. And now it is January the 6th and far too late to make any comments about any of these. One thing i will do though is tell you all of my new years resolutions. Yes, unfortunately, it is that time of year again where everyone lies to themselves about this year being the difference. For me, these are not resolutions, because that would suggest at some point i had resolved to do the opposite of these decisions. These are simply statements of things i intend to do with my time rather than sitting wasting my final months at university away watching re-runs of Friends and Scrubs!

So my plan is three-fold (yes that was a very subtle Friends reference):

1. I WILL get a job whether Manchester likes it or not- otherwise everything else will fall out of place.

2. Despite having a job taking up all spare time i will also put more energy into my extra curricular activities- the student newspaper deserves much more attention, especially if i do decide to run for Editor in April! I will also put more effort into Twitter, reading more blogs, newspapers and features and of course this blog!

3. I will work very very hard at all of my essays this year, no matter how much i dislike the subject, the reading load or the lecturers. Sociology will NOT drag down my entire degree mark thank you very much!

With this plan set in place i am unlikely to fail. That's what i will continue to tell myself anyway, along with 6 billion other people who have vowed to work harder, lose weight or dump that loser boyfriend!!

Over and out!

Gemma

My latest pieces of work

Well i got to do another contribution to one of my features in the student newspaper. Look for Top Ten things to do before the snow goes:

http://issuu.com/salford123/docs/issue122010/1

And i also did a film review for Unitown.co.uk of the latest Harry Potter so enjoy :)

http://www.unitown.co.uk/articles/626/48/harry-potter-and-the-deathly-hallows-part-one

Over and out.

Gemma

What is all the hype about?

I have learnt a few valuable lessons in the past few weeks:

1) You cannot rely on a woman whose just come off maternity leave, even if she does sound lovely on the phone.

2) Twitter is NOT private and is therefore very dangerous!

3) Watching TV is not necessarily just pleasurable- it can also be a foot in the door for a job.

4) Time does not fly when you are having fun- it flies when graduation is at the end of third year! AND

5) Twitter is actually very enjoyable and informative!

So. For my music feature assignment i finally settled on an idea that i was happy with but having left it to until the last minute (a week before deadline) i didn't have much time to get the interviews i wanted. So when a friend suggested trying to get an interview with Sir Jimmy Savile and gave me a phone number to call at the Yorkshire Evening Post for a contact i panicked! After ten minutes of freaking out that i might have to interview a national treasure in the next week i rang the number (a big step for me, i used to be so scared of phones and strangers!!) and instantly hit a wall.

Bit i drove round the wall and tried a different tact, got the office number of a woman who had interviewed him several times. Sounds great right? The problem was she was on part-time because she was just coming off maternity leave. I managed to talk to her a few days later, she promised to ring him then and get back to me. Sadly never did, despite countless calls and emails, and suddenly the Jimmy Savile dream was over. Luckily my back-up choices were more available and i gave the piece in on time and on the most part happy with it.

What is the worst way to find out that Twitter is not private? Abuse your teacher to a friend then have him email you to inform you that you are in fact wrong later in the day? Correct! My God i was mortified! Thankfully he's a DJ with a very thick skin (apparently) and didn't take it to heart. Or so he says... we'll find out when i get my final mark back i guess!!

So it turns out that TV is a huge talking point for Twitter and therefore a great way to voice an opinion to a celebrity or journalist. This week everyone is talking about Coronation Street. I admit i used to watch it with my family and it got very hard to quit when i came to university so now i get back into it every holiday. So i know the characters and a few storylines well enough to watch the 50 year anniversary episode without being totally lost.

It was quite a spectacle wasn't it?! Living in Manchester i was naturally curious about how much i could see if i went down to the Street's set. They had big screens up blocking the view of most of the big incident but you could see the Metro train hanging off the bridge and that was enough to entice me into watching it when the day came to see four deaths on the Street.

So Monday comes and i switch on TV along with millions of others across the country. The actual explosion was done well, but we know that soaps are great at big explosions. What was new for Soapland was another disaster moments later and this came with the very stricken-looking Metro driver. He was extremely frightened wasn't he?? The head of the tram coming off the broken tracks and into Dev's i can understand and it looked spectacular.

Sadly i think that Corrie bosses pushed it ever so slightly too far when the back end of the tram then decided to lift itself off the tracks and land on top of The Kabin. It looked like a child's train set had been picked up by the five year old and plonked on top of the Street. But for a soap on a soap budget, as oppose to a Hollywood budget it wasn't terrible!

I am so happy to discover that watching a soap i have loved since i was 8 years old could get me noticed on Twitter and maybe one day even hired! From now on i watch anything that is getting a lot of attention... So come on Britain give TV a lot of attention this Christmas because then i have an excuse- sorry, reason- for slobbing out day and night!!

Graduation is looming and it is all i can think about! I keep thinking about what i will wear under the gown, will i have my hair up or will that ruin the position of the hat? And what if i only get a 2:2? Worst thing in the world? And what if don't graduate with my friends? What if i don't graduate at all? Most of me desperately pushes that thought to the back of my brain because it is terrifying but a little tiny part of me secretly hopes i fail just so i can put off the real world for another year!

I am new to Twitter so am yet to understand all the networking capabilities, the trends and the hash tags but i am trying. I had always sworn i would not sign up because it is legalised stalking but it is not JUST legalised stalking. It is also a huge network of potential contacts, a web of flies for me to feed on!

One day i will look back at the day i signed up to Twitter and thank God i did because i am certain it is more likely to get me a job than if i hadn't joined. I cannot emphasise enough how great it is. I almost prefer it to Facebook... give me a few months though!

Over and out!

Gemma

Archived Features from Salford Student Direct

I have been Features Editor for the Salford Student Direct for 15 months now and have enjoyed every minute of it.

I first got into it when i got the generic email from last year's editor asking if i wanted to be involved in the paper during my second year. I had only written one article in my first year but had wanted to be more involved.

I made friends with many people in the theatre company at university in my first year and wanted to write the reviews of their shows in my second year. I told this to the new editor and she loved the idea.

A few days later i was offered the position of Features Editor and had to come up with three original ideas for continuing features each week. Somehow i managed it and i haven't looked back since then really!

I've been blessed to have made friends with the two editors i have worked with and they have given me wonderful opportunities to see my own writing printed. This year i have even branched into news writing and got my very first front page just last week!

Below you can see the issues of the papers, and look out for continuing features "Top Ten" and "Rule The World", they are my babies!

Week one of third year, page four:

http://issuu.com/salford123/docs/issue_1_-_welcome_2010/1

Week two, page ten:

http://issuu.com/salford123/docs/issue22010/1

Week three, page five and ten:

http://issuu.com/salford123/docs/issue32010/1

Week four, page ten:

http://issuu.com/salford123/docs/issue42010/1

Some weeks we have enough input from other writers to not need my input so in weeks five and six i took on a sub-editing role, rather than doing the writing myself.

Week seven, front page side column, pages two and three:

http://issuu.com/salford123/docs/issue82010/1

Week eight, front page:

http://issuu.com/salford123/docs/issue92010/1

Week nine, page six:

http://issuu.com/salford123/docs/issue92010/1

Thank you for reading again.

From now on i promise to only include links to one or two stories at a time, wouldn't want to overload my readers after all!

Over and out!