A new sphere

I must apologise for the length of this post. It's been a long time! But I need to start keeping a more regular blog and I shall aim to do a weekly update from now on. So! I become a journalist tomorrow. Officially. They’re even giving me money to do it. That sounds obvious but I know so many journalism graduates out there working their hands to the bone (from doing so much shorthand) completely for free. My dad looked at me as if I were a loon when I was doing lots of work experience at the Derby Telegraph. “You’re working for free?! What is this madness?!” He would scream, face red and forehead vein pulsating with rage. And I would reply “Yes, for that’s just how it works in journalism.” But I think now I realise that it’s not the only industry where this is commonplace. To get that ever longed-for first graduate job you need the experience… but where do you get the experience if no-one will hire you? You work for nothing. There’s no other way.

Internships are so rare these days (especially in the newspaper industry) and when they do come around they’re often unpaid. I am so incredibly lucky to have a job, but if my local paper had been the Evening Standard there would have been no way I could have afforded to do any work ex there. I had some booked at the Manchester Evening News and they told me it would be beneficial if I had a car. I don’t really know how they expected me to be able to fund a car with zero income and a maxed-out overdraft.

But anyway, I need not worry about these things anymore. And this evening my mind is filled with quite a scrumptious nervy excitement about tomorrow. I have a little pile of things in the corner of my room (pictured pointlessly below!) which are intended for my new desk. They include a new multi-coloured diary, drawing pins which are shaped like bees, my Law and Public Affairs text books and a mug. The all-important office mug. Which shouldn’t be too garish but should show your personality to some extent I think. Some of the reporters have quirky mugs, some have mugs from places they’ve been and some have an ever-changing string of different mugs. Mine is a relatively retro flowery sort of mug. Not too large so I don’t overdose on caffeine on my first day.

It’s scary. You start off writing as a job and although you can write on quite a basic level you look at some of your features or attempted opinion columns and think ‘what the heck is this?’. I have great taste in books, I’m constantly reading something, and as a result you expect your writing to be excellent. But it’s not. It’s terrible. But as some dude once said, you have to just keep writing. Keep putting out stuff you’re not mega-proud of and hope that it eventually evolves into something good.

But saying all of that writing is quite a small part of being a reporter. The main bit (and the most exciting bit) is the finding of the stories. The best story I ever got (I judge this from the fact it was the front-page drop) was just someone who rang in about her daughter’s dog and Christmas presents having been stolen. The father of this girl was a Derby County player so ta-dah! Front page drop. But it was exciting! Because I was writing it under a very tight deadline. We had to sort out pictures for the story really late in the day and it was just fun. I feel very sorry for the poor sub-editor who had to go through my work though, as it probably read really badly. But anyway, I just hope that I’m a good journalist. I hope I can just absorb everything. I think I'm just paranoid because I've heard it said that good journalists aren't made, they're born, and I've been worried since I entered this world that I wasn't  'born' a journalist. I get paranoid about ridiculous things!

The main thing I’m worried about though, and this is a personal thing which has been said to me and followed me my entire life:

“You’re too nice” 

I hear it all the time. I think this is because I’m REALLY polite. I’m way too polite. I know that. I apologise if I even slightly bump into people and I am very over-thankful if someone makes me a cup of tea or lends me a pen. And just generally I’m very, very polite. That’s just something that has been imprinted on me from an early age. I can’t help it. I don’t think I can change it. But I can almost guarantee that it’ll make people think I won’t be a very good journalist and it’s bugging me to death!

I can hardly go into the newsroom tomorrow and charge around like the Incredible Hulk just to make a point. And there’s no reason people should think that just because I’m nice I’m also not driven and not motivated because that’s a load of balls. But I know people judge you automatically and potentially I’m going in to the Derby Telegraph tomorrow already being thought of as “too nice”. I hope not. And I hope I can prove that nice does not = being a wet blanket. Underneath this blonde, over-polite, vaguely hippyish exterior is a relatively thick-skinned woman with a longing to see her name on the front page (some day… soon I hope!)

But basically. Tomorrow my life changes completely. I go from being the eternal student to starting what I hope to be a very long, fruitful, enjoyable and fascinating career path. I know things can get very hard. I'm under no illusions that I know it all or that I'm not going to struggle at times but I just feel so lucky to be in the position I'm in. And luck or not I can honestly say, for once and without an overly-apologetic closing statement, I'm proud of myself. The end!