Yes, I am blogging and, therefore, contemplating my career over the Easter holidays. Turns out it’s been on my mind a fair bit recently, which some might take to be a good sign. I take it as a growing annoyance. But anyway, contemplating I am.
Having made a much needed visit to the Careers office a couple of weeks before the end of term, I have acknowledged something I’ve been trying to deny and ignore out of existence for a while now: I want to be a journalist. There we go, the truth is most certainly out, with the help of a kind careers advisor. I have been carrying this idea around with me since producing a supplement for my local paper when I was fifteen, but have been desperately resisting the desire to write for a living in favour of searching for something more “attainable and realistic”, for these main reasons:
1. I have been fazed by the level of competition in the industry.
2. I’ve been questioning my ability in the writing department following said competition.
3. For the reasons above, I hadn’t bothered trying to gather any valuable experience. (Ok, I’m not going to pin it down to all of the above, I’ve partly just been lapping up the uni experience a bit too much to get myself organised.) And,
4. I am a little bit silly.
But better late than never. And so here I am, trying to figure out the best way to start getting my foot in the door, or a big toe at least! The careers adviser has sent me a few useful links, and I’ve been reasearching how other people from Newcastle have made themselves into successful journalists, and trying to decide what type of journalism interests me most. After a year of empty promises to myself, claiming I would attend Courier meetings, I finally swallowed my apprehension and showed up, and have managed to churn out an article for them. Hopefully more to follow there!
Easter will be spent trying to come up with a corker of a dissertation topic (I’ve been told a couple of glasses of vino will help get the creative juices flowing!) and hounding some local newspapers for work experience over summer. If there’s one thing I’ve realised, it’s that the actual DOING instead of THINKING ABOUT DOING is much easier. Now I’m finally applying myself nothing is as daunting as it seemed.
Hope you’re all having productive (and stress free!) time off 🙂 J

As a second year English Language student, who currently has very little idea where my degree is taking me, and more to the point where I WANT it to take me, I thought this may well be a good place to start…
I’m realising I can’t delay the inevitable much longer, and need to address the ever nearing prospect of life after uni (eeek!). What exactly do I do with my degree when all I know is that, put plainly, “I love to write”. Is a masters the way forward? It would certainly buy me more time to arrive at a decision…Or would experience in the world of work be more beneficial? Having toyed with these two options for the past few months, changed my mind several times, and made no progress whatsoever, I have finally come to a conclusion. I need to get some advice. And so to the careers office I am going to go. Yes, I’m aware a sensible and well organised person would have made this wise decision a few months ago, but you could say I’ve been burying my head in the metaphorical sand for quite some time. The good news is: I’m finally ready to start digging my way out in order to figure out some kind of idea about my life after uni. It’s not as far away as I thought!
Should a revolutionary light bulb moment occur I will blog it, and should I just be pondering what the future holds, I’ll blog that too…For the moment, it’s back to seminar prep.
Thanks for reading 🙂