Kirstie's job log: 40

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.

Testing time

With the Easter break just a couple of weeks away, the sun seems to have finally made an appearance. Everyone is tentatively starting to make plans for the summer and afternoon drinking sessions outside are a regular occurrence.

Unfortunately a lot of the sunny days are spent inside right now, as everyone desperately tries to write, record, interview and edit together amazing news stories for the upcoming ‘assessed newsdays’ - two words that will strike fear in the heart of any journalism student at the moment! Whatever we decide to use on these two days (both in the upcoming week) will be marked and is the majority of our final grades!

We’re not the only ones on campus running around looking stressed though - it seems the next couple of weeks are full of deadline days for all the courses. It has made the campus seem very manic - with film students round every corner trying to get the perfect shot, photography students frantically snapping pictures of anything vaguely arty, and fashion students running around in amazing outfits.

It also means the student bar - currently my favourite place to spend some time relaxing - has got very quiet. Luckily for the journalism students, the rooms where we do our editing are locked in the evening, so it’s pretty impossible to get any work done. As we’re unable to carry on working into the evening, once the day is over and everyone has done what they can, we head straight to the bar…and are the only ones in it.

Over Easter we have to start thinking about our final project, and try and get a couple of interviews lined up. So far I have no idea what mine will be on, I’m hoping that sooner or later I will have a flash of inspiration and be able to create an amazing feature that gets me some great marks!

Future tense

We’re all starting to look into what we’re going to do once we’ve finished the course. A couple of the girls already have jobs lined up at the places they did their work experience - one has even been offered a job working on Blue Peter! At the moment, the idea of being able to find some kind of position is very worrying for everyone, as jobs in the media industry are very hard to come by right now. I’ve already been turned down for two positions I applied for. Time to start looking for more!

When it comes time to finish, I will be sad to leave everyone on the course. Originally when I decided to come back to university, I wasn’t interested in making friends, I just wanted to get the work done and get back to work. But we all have got on so well and being forced to rely on each other each and every day has really turned us into a team. When we do practice newsdays, no one wants to let down anyone else by not turning in a piece of work or not writing a good report.

I have also loved living in London the past few months. If it was at all possible to find work in the city (which also paid enough to mean I could afford to live), then I would definitely take it. The ability to get anything I want at any time of day or night, having amazing shopping only 20 minutes away and 24-hour travel (even if the night buses aren’t the nicest) has been great.

In order to get a my dream job in the media that pays the right money and is based in the city, I need to sit down and spend some serious time trawling the internet and various other places for any jobs that I might be able to apply for. I already know from experience that the job you want doesn’t just fall into your lap, no matter how much you want it to, or even how qualified you are! I’m hoping that once the next two weeks have passed and the Easter break starts, I’ll be able to spend some quality time - just me, my CV and my computer.

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