Kirstie's job log: 43

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 final project 

The past nine months have been filled with lectures, seminars, meetings, interviews, news articles to write, radio programmes to record and TV news bulletins to put together. Now, the classes have all finished and there’s only the final project left to do before the course is all over.

It’s very odd going from having to be in classes at university every day to being able to work on your own and set your own timetable. At first I found it hard not to just sleep in every morning, but after a couple of days of not really getting anything done (but watching plenty of TV) the panic started to set in that I’d never get the work finished, and I’ve been making sure I do some work every day.

For the final project, we had to pick a topic that is currently newsworthy and either write an article, or make a radio documentary about it. As it's usually easier to cover something that has at least two opposing sides to the argument, I have chosen to put together a radio documentary on the upcoming EU elections - what seemed like a great idea when I first came up with it but as time goes on it is becoming more and more of a problem.

When I started out, I knew very little about how the European Union worked, how it affected the UK, or even what kind of laws it covered. Through interviews with various MEPs, youth leaders and campaign groups I’ve learnt a lot more - and I mean a LOT more. There is so much information involved that it seems needs to be covered, it’s going to be hard to fit it all into one short documentary.

It also turns out that no matter how many times you stress to a politician that you want their answers to be as simple and basic as possible, they can’t seem to help themselves overcomplicating things. So although they said some great things, the way they said it is so difficult and long-winded that it’s going to be a huge task to cut some clips out and make them make any sense.

Despite the problems, I’m sure I’ll get it finished and handed in on time. Apart from that, I have a shorthand exam (tomorrow morning - I really should be doing some revision!), which luckily doesn’t count towards my final grade. Unfortunately, despite the hours of lessons we’ve had over the past nine months, I don’t seem to be cut out to do shorthand, and I’m pretty certain I’m going to fail. I’ll just make sure I carry around a recorder everywhere so I don’t need to use it!

The last night

What I’m looking forward to most of all about the end of next week is going out with everyone from the course and having a very drunk, goodbye night out. It’s been a long time since we had the chance to go out: with everyone working hard on their own to get the final project finished, we’ve hardly met up at all (apart from the shorthand classes). After that, everyone will head back home to look for jobs.

Eventually I’ll do the same, but I’m planning to stay in London until my university accommodation runs out in June. I’ll use the time to concentrate on looking for jobs in the media - although with the credit crunch now in full swing the reports we’ve been hearing from journalists are pretty bleak.

For now, the job hunt has been put on hold while I concentrate on getting through the last little bit of the course, but I’m starting to think I might have a go an working freelance for a bit - both writing and for radio. I’m planning to look for a little part time job close to home just so that I have some regular income coming in every month, and then seeing what work I can get through freelancing. That way I can still continue to write and to do radio until I find out which I’m best at!

Read my previous job logs   

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