Snow week :)

So I finished work ex and have spent the last week buggering around. I was going to be good and blog everyday, practice my shorthand, and research some possibly story ideas, but instead i did.....well i just didn't to be honest.

However I'm blaming my lack of work on the snow-everyone i know had a couple of days off work due to it.....so why shouldn't i have chilled too?

Not that my week was unproductive of course, i had the culinary experience of cookies and tgi fridays, the cultural experience of the cinema and various dvds and american trash on tv (I today cried at CROWNED a beauty queen reality show), i travelled-up the M25 and back again, and celebrated life with tribal dances (I went clubbing and got hideously drunk) and i practiced my communication skills (I sent a lot of texts)

I also spent a lot of time sleeping.

The one think i didn't do this week was shop, a real rarity i must say-but you see shopping involves going outside and since its cold, i have no money and my credit card bill hadn't been paid by that point-i thought it best i declined from my favourite activity.

On another note, i start back at uni tomorrow, so i will once again be on top of the news agenda and reading the Guardian on the train and pissing off whoever im sitting next to by waving the paper in their face. woop woooooooooooo

Day 2.

Day 2 of work experience.

Again pretty uneventful. Spoke to a few people on the phone and got some lame arse quotes and wrote more picture stories.

Then one of the guys that works in the office (not a sub) said he'd looked over what I wrote and tweaked it. Fair enough, so i looked at what he'd done and he'd completely re-written it! And whats more (and I'm not saying this because I'm arrogant and bitter) it was so much worse than what i'd written in the first place! It was clumpy and the sentences were too long. Now i certainly do not claim to be shakespeare, and i can take constructive criticism, but what was the point in that?lol

So being at work I missed Obama's acceptance speech :(

And get home in time to watch a triple bill of Friends :P 

Work experience day 1

So today was my first day at work experience at the Southend Echo. After having a complete nightmare trying to park, i ended up parking in the £15 a day multi storey (although due to my cunning and genius I took my car out and put it back in at mid day so I only paid £9 woop!). I will be looking for somewhere more pocket friendly tomorrow.

I arrived at 9.30 (after a quick confidence boosting trip to Costa Coffee) and was instantly unsettled by the grim silence of the place, to be honest I don't think anyone was that thrilled at the prospect of ANOTHER work experience kid. Which, you know, is fair enough really, I'm perfectly aware that most get under their feet and are always doing things wrong or asking winey questions....but then how do we learn??

So after sitting quietly for maybe 15mins I trotted off behind Laura to go sit in the Courts for 3 hours. I'm always amazed at the amount of idiots in Southend, I really shouldn't be but I am. One guy was being tried for 4 armed robberies, but tried to get out on bail by showing the Magistrate his back. Yes, really.

In the afternoon, I wrote 3 little stories to go along side some pictures on utterly irrelevant things in an effort to fill space. For the most part i spent the day looking up the presidential celebrations and wishing i was part of them lol.

Not a bad day in all.

How to not get work experience grrrrrr

• apply to one place at a time-out of courtesy of course
• apply to multiple places at a time, in the hope of one saying yes
• apply via email- very politely stating what you want-either get no reply or a rather rude one from the Telegraph review
• call- very unhelpful switchboard assistants whose goal in life is not to let you speak to anybody

Possible ways i might try to get work experience

• offer to give them money so I can work there
• stand outside the offices with a banner saying 'MA student wanting to work FOR FREE'
• stalk the editors of the company, sit outside the office, track down their home addresses, call them at all hours of the night!
• sleep with the mail boy (that probably won't work)
• start a campaign of hate against the publications and only agree to disband unless the give me work experience.