Life as a Journalism Student
2 Mar 2010
Think of a journalism student and you may imagine a Mac clothed figure who wears a trilby hat with a press card poking out, looking like William Norman Ewer. Yet in 2010, journalism students come in all shapes and sizes, with all sorts of looks and even a plethora of styles.
I should know, being a journalism student myself.
I'm in my first year of HND Practical Journalism at Cardonald College, a course the National Council for Training of Journalists (NCTJ) say has "restored our faith in journalism training."
As the course title suggests, it is practically based and often we have external visits away from our news desk classroom. Two visits to the BBC at Pacific Quay had our class as an audience to Brian Taylor's Big Debate, and for Dale Winton's In It To Win It. A sure way to show our faces to the Beeb and make sure we look more than keen in their broadcast bravado.
A trip to Holyrood Parliament ensured we were putting our public affairs studies to the test, and visits to sit in the public galleries of both the Sheriff and High Courts gave us a chance to vigorously practice shorthand and coax our Scots law for journalists knowledge out into our minds domain.
It was only the other day we had the editor-in-chief of The Herald and Evening Times (arguably Glasgow's most well known papers) come in and speak to us about his job. Definitely a somewhat informal way of sussing out what makes a high profile journalist tick (better to find out now than on the job).
In case you're wondering, here is the low down of the subjects we study: news and feature writing, Scots law, public affairs, shorthand, sub-editing, electronic news gathering, desktop publishing and social and ethical studies.
So if you have a real thirst for news and current affairs, human interest and a love of writing, maybe this course is for you.
Louise Devlin