After a fun friday, a dubious saturday, and a sleepy sunday, my post-Uni weeks-o-peace finally came to an end. Today, I started my magazine journalism course at noSWeat in London, which will last four days a week for three months.
Got up at 7am and had breakfast before dad dropped me off at the train station, where I got the train to Paddington with my shiny new Season Ticket/Travelcard (the upshot of which is I get unlimited travel to London via train, so I can make the most of what the city has to offer with gigs and stuff). The trains were packed, but Jeremy Paxman's The English: A Portrait of a People kept me occupied as I made my way to Farringdon. Grabbed a coffee once there and just wandered over to the centre, located just off a curiously European-esque square dotted with mopeds and al fresco dining tables.
The day was long, my body having been dulled by easy living and so forth, but the morning was simple, only involving meeting my coursemates and the course staff. I'm one of a mere four people on the course, the summer period meaning most people are away or otherwise occupied (apparently the autumn course has twenty-three people). As seems my tragic lot in life, the other three are ladies who all live in London, a couple of years further removed from Uni than I but friendly and with much common ground between us. Being the magazine kids we get the better PCs and the air-conditioned basement, so we were comfortable as course head Richard gave us the lowdown. It sounds interesting and very intensive, with a great deal of practical work. Indeed, after a lovely lunch the head of the college Steven Ward set us straight to news writing, on the more mundane pervue of FoodNews, a business-to-business magazine dealing with food processing, production, and distribution. It was difficult seeing as we had not yet learned the necessary sklls to research a story withour reference to existing news sites, but after Steven set me on the right path I churned out a 200 word story which he marked as 'excellent'!
I've got another two stories to write for thursday (I get wednesdays off) as well as the task of researching the person in control of the magazine, as prep for a future interview. Alongside the basic journalistic story-writing I'll be studying appropriate legal matters and editorial/production elements, and tomorrow I'll be kicking off on learning Teeline Shorthand, a devil of a prospect which at first glance has more in common looks-wise with arabic than english. Fingers crossed.
It's going to be an intense three months, but I relish the chance to develop and be challenged in an interactive environment.
Now if only I could deal with mornings...
Got up at 7am and had breakfast before dad dropped me off at the train station, where I got the train to Paddington with my shiny new Season Ticket/Travelcard (the upshot of which is I get unlimited travel to London via train, so I can make the most of what the city has to offer with gigs and stuff). The trains were packed, but Jeremy Paxman's The English: A Portrait of a People kept me occupied as I made my way to Farringdon. Grabbed a coffee once there and just wandered over to the centre, located just off a curiously European-esque square dotted with mopeds and al fresco dining tables.
The day was long, my body having been dulled by easy living and so forth, but the morning was simple, only involving meeting my coursemates and the course staff. I'm one of a mere four people on the course, the summer period meaning most people are away or otherwise occupied (apparently the autumn course has twenty-three people). As seems my tragic lot in life, the other three are ladies who all live in London, a couple of years further removed from Uni than I but friendly and with much common ground between us. Being the magazine kids we get the better PCs and the air-conditioned basement, so we were comfortable as course head Richard gave us the lowdown. It sounds interesting and very intensive, with a great deal of practical work. Indeed, after a lovely lunch the head of the college Steven Ward set us straight to news writing, on the more mundane pervue of FoodNews, a business-to-business magazine dealing with food processing, production, and distribution. It was difficult seeing as we had not yet learned the necessary sklls to research a story withour reference to existing news sites, but after Steven set me on the right path I churned out a 200 word story which he marked as 'excellent'!
I've got another two stories to write for thursday (I get wednesdays off) as well as the task of researching the person in control of the magazine, as prep for a future interview. Alongside the basic journalistic story-writing I'll be studying appropriate legal matters and editorial/production elements, and tomorrow I'll be kicking off on learning Teeline Shorthand, a devil of a prospect which at first glance has more in common looks-wise with arabic than english. Fingers crossed.
It's going to be an intense three months, but I relish the chance to develop and be challenged in an interactive environment.
Now if only I could deal with mornings...