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?

So much happening...

Hello ladies and gents.

So yes - I have not been on lately. Well, for one thing my cousin was visiting. I haven't seen her in ages so it was good to do so. We did lots of fun things together, from going to ABC to seeing Alice in Wonderland (at last - I liked it). And we went for a wander around the West End.

I have also had essays to do - eek! Two due within four days of each other - and I lose a day on one because I'm going to Newcastle D: Sigh. I cannot fail these essays either, they're both worth a large portion of my overall grade. Remind me, why did I not take classes I could actually muster interest in? It doesn't help that my uni's library is about as much use as a chocolate teapot. I might actually have to venture to one of the other libraries in the city to obtain sources relevant to my subjects. The only thing that reassures me is that both essays are now at about 40-45% of the approximate required word count.

What makes it worse is that my uni are holding their annual writing competition and the deadline is the same day as one of my essays. ARGH. I really wanted to enter this year. Okay, with the standard of writers on my course (I can assure you all now, I am NOT the best one there) I probably have no chance of winning. But I got commended last year. Admittedly little effort went into last year's...ahem...effort. I used a play in Shetland dialect that I'd had for years, it was so old it went into my Advanced Higher English creative writing portfolio from 6th year of high school. Commended is not bad. Commended is acknowledgement, it gets into the booklet and therefore still exists. That was all I wanted for years and I got it. I suppose I'm happy with that. The bother is, I have a new idea, but I'm not sure I have the time to write it. I guess I could try during study breaks?

Ocht...I'm fed up now.

Job Hunt

So...in the flurry I got into about abandoning a work that had consumed nearly seven years of my life, I forgot to mention - my graduation ain't too far off.

The other day, I received the forms and information etc. concerning the aforementioned robes-n'-parchment fest. If all goes well, I graduate on July 12th of this year at 11am. Fun times...provided, of course, that I have a job to fall into.

So here I am, applying for many different things. For one thing, I currently have an election campaign on the go. I've stood for a position in the student executive for a year. Since it's the most contested election this year and I've been very slack on finding a campaign team I've little chance of getting it. I've officially started applying for other jobs too, and will tell these people I can start in May or June depending on exams.

Oh boy...I'll surely find something out of all the stuff I'm looking for. Just sign up to as many job sites as I can. It's not a good time to be a nearly-graduate right now. Better than it was last year, that's for sure, but still not good.

Trouble is, of course, I have no cash behind me. If I can't get a job in Glasgow, or even Edinburgh, I'm screwed. I have to move back home to Shetland, which, to be honest, I don't really want to do any more. There would, of course, be a graduate scheme with the council back home, but that's hardly any kind of guarantee really. Really I'm still keen to work in the media, but that's a bit of a dying industry, and my course has kind of put paid to that idea in so many ways. The class of 2010 will be the first batch of graduates to leave ill-equipped for the real world of work in that sector, all because they made major changes to the course that we didn't ask for...but I can't go into that for various reasons. One of those being that the whole thing still pisses me off.

As well as this...dissertation! See, I told you I wasn't laying my current work to rest completely. This is because the dissertation contains The Good Bits. Well, my supervisor thinks they're good, and I'm more confident in them than I am with the rest of it. Just need to write a commentary that doesn't just say 'It has a beginning, a middle and an end, and a distinctive narrator', and I should be okay. Ah.

The next few months are going to be busy academically. I just hope I can cope with it all without needing sectioned by the end...