Kirstie's job log: 41

The story so far... Kirstie gave up her job in sales to pursue her dream of a career in journalism with a Masters at Westminster University.

The road home

After a couple of manic weeks trying to get all my work finished and handed in on time, it’s finally time for a bit of a break. Easter is here and I have three weeks of home-cooked food to look forward to.

Moving some of my stuff back home for the holidays was interesting: it’s been a few months since I brought anything but a few weekend clothes home, but with the course finishing soon and the likelihood that I’ll have to come home afterwards, I thought I’d start to move back some of the junk. It seems I have managed to accumulate quite a bit of junk over the past few months, and I can’t seem to work out how.

My room at home now literally looks like some kind of explosion has gone off at some point. I thought by packing it all into boxes I was being organised and methodical; however, it didn’t spring to mind that I might have an urge to get some of the things out of the boxes. Now I have plenty of half-empty boxes piled around my room and very little carpet in sight.

To keep out of my room, I managed to charm my way into a week’s work experience at the local radio station close to home, and I’m halfway through the week already. It’s been a completely different experience so far to my three weeks in Liverpool, and one I’m really enjoying. Apart from having the mad idea to ask if I could see how the breakfast team worked (and therefore having to get to the station at 5.30 in the morning), it’s been going well.

Unfortunately I’m still no closer to deciding what it is I actually want to do when the course is finished. Over the rest of the Easter break I will need to spend a lot of the time applying for jobs, work experience placements and freelance work, so I have decided that instead of narrowing down what I’m looking for, I’ll just apply for anything that interests me and go from there!

The other thing that I’ll need to spend some time researching is my final dissertation, the basic outline of which needs to be in by the end of the holidays. As I am no closer to deciding what it is I want to do it on, I should probably set aside a bit of time to think about that! We have also been given a choice on whether we want to write a 15,000-word essay or put together a 30-minute radio documentary. While the essay could be quite interesting, the radio documentary sounds a lot more fun so it looks like I might end up doing that in the end!

Account balance

After checking my bank balance a couple of days ago, which seemed to be overflowing with cash at the start of the year and now seems to be woefully low (I’m sure someone has borrowed my bank card at some point!), I have come to the nasty conclusion that as nice as it would be to spend the next three months doing little more than working on my dissertation, I am going to have to look for extra income.

I have started by begging and pleading at a local pub to give me a few shifts over the weekend, and they finally relented when they realised I wasn’t going to go away. I will be starting my first shift there this weekend, so I plan to amaze them with my bar skills on the first night so they either employ me on a more permanent basis, or pay me a lot of money to go away and not come back.

Aside from looking for work, both immediately and for when the course is over, for the first time in a while I don’t have that much that I need to get done. The sun is starting to come out more often, the clocks have gone forward so the evenings are lighter and my jumpers are starting to be packed away. It looks like it's going to be a relaxing and enjoyable couple of weeks. Happy Easter everyone!

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