Big weekend? Well, I lifted the titular lyric from the Tom Petty song of the same name, but anyway, I definitely had one.
The publishing company I currently work for had events on at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this weekend, and we had an absolute ball making our presence known. So far, we've had an awesome reaction to the book we put out last month (and - here's me in sales mode - methinks you ought to buy it from the website, pretty please). We were even allowed in the authors' yurt - as in the big tent they all sit in to prepare for their show. They even let us drink their wine and eat their apples. We had a lot of promoting to do too. The other stuff outwith the book festival involved wandering around Edinburgh city centre while my boss and our events person hunted down a 24 hour shop in order to procure cigarettes, and the following evening we had a pre-event tea at the nearest Wetherspoon's which involved ripping the piss out of their Edinburgh Festival menu (50p dearer than their Rest Of The Year menu, as our editor / resident comedian was quick to point out - it looked the same to me). I was on my feet so much I now have a huge blister on my right heel. But it was worth it, because I'm so proud of what we're doing and I feel privileged to have been involved. It's not quite over yet - we're part of the final night of the festival too next week. But I have a feeling that this may be a summer I look back on with some fondness. Still not sure if I'll consider 2010 to be the best of years, but it's so far had a lot of good things about it.
I'm also still looking for a new home. I do at least have the advantage of now having a friend in a similar situation to move in with, so I'm now looking for a whole flat as opposed to just a room with strangers. This does at least give me a little more freedom, which is never a bad thing. It's just that we've picked such a shit time of year to actually be looking for something - seems like all the students are snapping the nice flats up. Now that I'm no longer a student I'm starting to see how annoying that is. It can't take long, though. Surely?
Photo by Chris Scott
Showing posts with label career plans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label career plans. Show all posts
Monday, 23 August 2010
Thursday, 13 May 2010
I'm down upon my knees, looking for my life...
So yeah...pressure is getting to me again.
I've still not found a Proper Grown Up Job to step into following the end of uni yet. As thus I have not started looking for a flat either. I am finally getting around to applying to publishing houses in Edinburgh asking if they want / need interns. It's getting desperate though. Gonna have to look outside the 'proper high-flying graduate job' box soon.
I wonder if it's my course. Those of you who know me well will know that we had a very public falling-out with our department over the way they taught our course. It was...questionable, to say the least. The course was supposed to be 'Journalism and Creative Writing'. However, it became 'journalism and creative writing'. Note the lack of caps in there. This is because they taught little of either. I would say that what we got was more of a thinly-disguised media studies course, mostly sociological rather than journalistic. We would talk about journalism. How other people wrote it, and what could and couldn't be considered journalism. Blogs, for instance. I don't consider this to be journalism, personally. Sure, a few major events have appeared in it since I opened it up in February, but I wouldn't say it's journalism. It's just me chipping in my two penn'orth on something I care / feel strongly about. There's a pretty big difference. I'd never consider myself a journalist, but that's a whole other point. It's not that the two subjects weren't taught at all - they were, of course, there's no way the department would have gotten away with that. And when they were taught, they were taught wonderfully and we learned a lot from them. They were just not taught frequently enough to justify titling the course as such.
Anyway yeah - the course previously had accreditation from the NCTJ, which was removed because, guess what, they weren't devoting enough time to real journalism. We complained loudly about this but were mainly ignored, and they basically ended up giving us a useless course. See, I can understand why we need to know research but there's no point learning it if we don't get an opportunity to put it into practise. But yes - the nub of my gist is that I have very few skills with which to get a good job. Yes, my main ambition is to write someday. But until then I need something to stay afloat. And my course has probably gotten a really poor reputation following all these losses...think I'm screwed.
Thought of the day:
Am I the only one in my circle who isn't getting married or pregnant?
I've still not found a Proper Grown Up Job to step into following the end of uni yet. As thus I have not started looking for a flat either. I am finally getting around to applying to publishing houses in Edinburgh asking if they want / need interns. It's getting desperate though. Gonna have to look outside the 'proper high-flying graduate job' box soon.
I wonder if it's my course. Those of you who know me well will know that we had a very public falling-out with our department over the way they taught our course. It was...questionable, to say the least. The course was supposed to be 'Journalism and Creative Writing'. However, it became 'journalism and creative writing'. Note the lack of caps in there. This is because they taught little of either. I would say that what we got was more of a thinly-disguised media studies course, mostly sociological rather than journalistic. We would talk about journalism. How other people wrote it, and what could and couldn't be considered journalism. Blogs, for instance. I don't consider this to be journalism, personally. Sure, a few major events have appeared in it since I opened it up in February, but I wouldn't say it's journalism. It's just me chipping in my two penn'orth on something I care / feel strongly about. There's a pretty big difference. I'd never consider myself a journalist, but that's a whole other point. It's not that the two subjects weren't taught at all - they were, of course, there's no way the department would have gotten away with that. And when they were taught, they were taught wonderfully and we learned a lot from them. They were just not taught frequently enough to justify titling the course as such.
Anyway yeah - the course previously had accreditation from the NCTJ, which was removed because, guess what, they weren't devoting enough time to real journalism. We complained loudly about this but were mainly ignored, and they basically ended up giving us a useless course. See, I can understand why we need to know research but there's no point learning it if we don't get an opportunity to put it into practise. But yes - the nub of my gist is that I have very few skills with which to get a good job. Yes, my main ambition is to write someday. But until then I need something to stay afloat. And my course has probably gotten a really poor reputation following all these losses...think I'm screwed.
Thought of the day:
Am I the only one in my circle who isn't getting married or pregnant?
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