66% down 1/3 to go.

Well that my friends is that.

It’s now our spring break down here in Falmouth and we have three weeks to revise for exams, research our MA and generally recharge our batteries.

The last few weeks have been pretty hectic as usual, with the class having to produce radio documentaries as well as making content for Live @ Five and working on our regulations and ethics projects (Censor This)

I’ve also had to cram in working for Pirate FM and have been to watch the Cornish Pirates against Esher and Bedford in the last couple of weeks. I’ve also been to see Reading draw with Plymouth Argyle which was a strange experience as I seemed to know more about Argyle’s form then my own teams thanks to my work for Pirate. Ironically due to licensing issues I wasn’t allowed to write the reports for the station from the game, as Pirate aren’t allowed to report from with Plymouth’s ground!

But anyway, after twenty weeks of solid learning and structured practical work we’ve pretty much finished the ‘taught’ section of the course. After 10 Live @ Five’s, 3 radio magazine shows and 8 or 9 radio newsroom days it’s now down to us to practise and learn the skills we feel we need to enhance and work on

It’s staggering to think just how much work we’ve had to do this term but I think it’s worthwhile when you’re able to look at yourself and say you’ve improved. Sat at my office desk last September I would have never thought I’d be producing an eight minute long politics documentary for radio, but at about 7pm on Thursday I handed in just such a project.

Already people’s focus on the course is looking toward the future, something that’s fun yet scary. Two weeks ago one of my best friends got a job freelancing at one of the local radio stations and it was a real wake up call to the fact that we can hopefully look forward to being PAID to do what we’ve been doing in class for weeks.  On a personal level I’ve had some good news this week as I’ve been lucky enough to get four weeks worth of work experience with Sky. Over June and then a few weeks later in July, I’ll be on placement with Sky Sports News before moving onto the Sky News sports desk.

From now until my time there I’m going to work my arse off to ensure that when I walk into those newsrooms I’m able to do as much as I can to as high a standard as possible to make a good impression. Thankfully as I’ve mentioned before the taught element of the course has now finished so we’ve got a lot more time to work on specific skills and to hone CV’s and demos for the future.  However, I’ve also had to start thinking about what to do for an MA project that I’ll be doing over the summer and handing in in September.

My proposal at the moment is to look at how the loss of Olympic status has harmed baseball within the UK. The piece I’m going to make will have to be between fifteen and twenty minutes long and can either be for radio or tv. Given the fact that sport is such a visual experience I’m going to try and produce it for television if I at all can. I won’t go into too much detail on this blog as in the next week or so I’ll be starting a separate blog to cover the project so watch this space.

I say it every week but I hope to blog a bit more in the next few weeks. Given that I’m now on holiday that should actually be a possibility for once!

Take it easy,

Wimbles

~ by wimbles on March 23, 2009.