Work Experience

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!!