This week I've been doing work experience with the news team at a local radio station.
The week started last Monday at 6.50am. SIX fifty! The fact I had to set my alarm to a time containing the number 6 made me a bit sick in my mouth. But I built a bridge and got over it. 7am I was out of bed and ready for the day. If it was a case of walking out of my front door and in to the studio, it would have been a totally different thing, but I had to walk in to town, get a bus to Gateshead and then get on another bus to the radio station. So, in total my journey was almost an hour. It was time consuming and tiring.
The first few days of the week I found it really hard to adjust my sleeping pattern. Being a student, I seem to get up if, and when, I need to. Well, I'm not that bad. It all depends what time I get myself to bed but that's the point, we don't seem to go to bed until the early hours of the next day if aren't due in lectures for 9am.
Anyway, I got used to the sleeping thing - or getting up thing should I say. It was the working thing that then became a problem. In broadcast, there's no 'sitting for five minutes and nodding off ' time. It's all go, go, go; in the news room itself or out at press conferences, interviewing people and finding new stories.
In terms of work, I struggled. By Tuesday, the second day in, I was questioning why the hell I was studying Broadcast Journalism because I felt like everything I wrote or edited wasn't going to make the cut. Not because I was being told I was awful, but because I struggle to find quality within my own work. Afterall, it's survival of the fittest in this career and only the best make it through. But I soon realised that everybody has to learn and all the people here helping me started out exactly like I did. It's just hard to accept that. And asking for help or instruction in an environment where everybody seems to be in some mad fight to find a story, seek material and get it out on air is difficult! In one way you feel like you're being the annoying work experience kid in the corner, but on the other hand you're sat there panicking you're going to get it wrong. Because, at the end of the day, they were giving me work that they would have done had I not been there, therefore I, too, was working to a deadline.
I've just finished my last day and I'm happy to say I felt more and more confident as the week went on and I saw myself improve. It makes a change! I could see the difference in my scripts from Monday through to Friday but I definitely think I would benefit from more work experience and help from people who know what they're talking about!
One thing I've learnt since Monday, and not necessarily just for Broadcast, is the value of questions. It sounds silly, but even people I met through the station, but didn't work with, have taught me. And listening to people talking next to me, or watching people across the room.
Some may call me a grade A creep, but I've learnt some valuable stuff!
AND, I must add that they were a lovely bunch of people and made me feel very welcome!!
Friday 24 February 2012
Thursday 9 February 2012
At the risk of sounding big headed...
Is it me, or does everybody doubt themselves?
For around the first 12 years of my life, life itself was a doddle. At age 4 I knew how to spell 'swimming', by year 4 I was reading books to the year 6's and in year 6 I got the highest marks in my SATS.
It eventually got to the point where I started to wonder when I was going to hit the brick wall, and find myself struggling. Year 7 I was pretty much the same; I could do it all. But it was soon after starting secondary school that I realised something, and it's a motto I still hold on to today despite my friends still laughing in my face every time I recite it:
"It's all about self satisfaction, not scraping through the pass mark. You only get out what you put in."
And I spent a lot of my time at secondary school being named a 'keen bean' or a 'swat' because my work was always done on time, to my best ability. I still can't see what was wrong with wanting to do well? My parents used to tell me to ask them who'd be laughing when they were sweeping the streets in ten years and I was in a high-end job. But I never had the guts. I just took the crap and soldiered on.
By the time it got to GCSE's I realised this wasn't something I could blag my way through, like the rest of my academic career so far. So I had to work. Work hard. I also had to realise that getting 100% wasn't always viable and this was the toughest thing to accept.
A Levels and University have turned out pretty much the same. I have to work to get what I want. But I often doubt myself. Especially today, I had to ask myself if this was something I really wanted to do, because it isn't easy. Sitting in the radio studio, where I go once a week to record my show, I found myself feeling uncomfortable. I was on my second link, yet I'd tried to record it about 14 times. And the words weren't coming out of my mouth like they needed to. My head wasn't clear and my voice was everywhere. Each sentence sounded as if it had been scripted by a 4 year old. It was a horrible feeling but I had to push past it and finish recording my show. It's probably the worst yet. But I'll only get better in time.
Was that just another brick wall I pushed down?
Maybe this is me in the next level of the game... Life.
For around the first 12 years of my life, life itself was a doddle. At age 4 I knew how to spell 'swimming', by year 4 I was reading books to the year 6's and in year 6 I got the highest marks in my SATS.
It eventually got to the point where I started to wonder when I was going to hit the brick wall, and find myself struggling. Year 7 I was pretty much the same; I could do it all. But it was soon after starting secondary school that I realised something, and it's a motto I still hold on to today despite my friends still laughing in my face every time I recite it:
"It's all about self satisfaction, not scraping through the pass mark. You only get out what you put in."
And I spent a lot of my time at secondary school being named a 'keen bean' or a 'swat' because my work was always done on time, to my best ability. I still can't see what was wrong with wanting to do well? My parents used to tell me to ask them who'd be laughing when they were sweeping the streets in ten years and I was in a high-end job. But I never had the guts. I just took the crap and soldiered on.
By the time it got to GCSE's I realised this wasn't something I could blag my way through, like the rest of my academic career so far. So I had to work. Work hard. I also had to realise that getting 100% wasn't always viable and this was the toughest thing to accept.
A Levels and University have turned out pretty much the same. I have to work to get what I want. But I often doubt myself. Especially today, I had to ask myself if this was something I really wanted to do, because it isn't easy. Sitting in the radio studio, where I go once a week to record my show, I found myself feeling uncomfortable. I was on my second link, yet I'd tried to record it about 14 times. And the words weren't coming out of my mouth like they needed to. My head wasn't clear and my voice was everywhere. Each sentence sounded as if it had been scripted by a 4 year old. It was a horrible feeling but I had to push past it and finish recording my show. It's probably the worst yet. But I'll only get better in time.
Was that just another brick wall I pushed down?
Maybe this is me in the next level of the game... Life.
Monday 6 February 2012
A complete contradiction...
At the risk of sounding like a bisexual, I may as well admit that I don't completely understand the concept of being straight, nor the concept of being gay.
When we take an interest in a person, it's not dependent on their genitals. We like a person based on their personality, interests and attitudes.
So what is it that makes us choose a certain sex over another, if the personality and interests of the people are the same? I'm not saying if a man and women both had the same personality and we got on well, that I'd be torn in which to choose, I'm just struggling to understand how it all works!
I think I'm looking too deeply in to this whole concept. Because, even I, myself, don't believe in what I'm preaching here!
[pointless blog]
When we take an interest in a person, it's not dependent on their genitals. We like a person based on their personality, interests and attitudes.
So what is it that makes us choose a certain sex over another, if the personality and interests of the people are the same? I'm not saying if a man and women both had the same personality and we got on well, that I'd be torn in which to choose, I'm just struggling to understand how it all works!
I think I'm looking too deeply in to this whole concept. Because, even I, myself, don't believe in what I'm preaching here!
[pointless blog]
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