Let’s be honest – more often than not university ‘speaker events’ are one giant yawn. A crusty expert drones on for 20 minutes, before a facilitator ‘throws it open to the floor!’ – and no-one has any questions. Excruciating.
Not so at the University of London’s ‘Getting into media’ event yesterday, where I joined a panel of fabulously feisty guests – and we couldn’t shut our audience up.
Uber-conscious of my status as a ‘fluffy’ features journalist (as well as working on Dude?, I write for Glamour, Grazia and Cosmopolitan), I found myself in impressive and high-powered company. On the panel alongside me was the charisma-packed Darren Burn (news reporter for ITN), the uber-knowledgeable Hannah Clements (careers adviser from the University of the Arts ), and the super-experienced (and PS – how chic?!) Kelli Hughes (Head of HR at Twentieth Century Fox).
For 40 minutes, our audience of 50 grads and soon-to-be-grads pelted us with genuinely challenging questions about careers in film, TV and journalism. We covered CVs, interviews, work experience, freelancing, vacancies… Jeezus, I’m telling you, these people just it went on and on and on…
And I had an absolute blast! So huge thanks to everyone who came along and for taking such an interest our experience (and laughing politely at our tragic little media jokes).
Oh, and as you may have noticed, I’m not quite down with this whole ‘flogging the book’ thing yet, but you really will find stacks more useful info packed into my new book Dude?, so do click on the ‘Order at Amazon’ box above, or get down to your local Waterstones to have a flick through – you’ll find Dude? in the Careers section. In particular, those who want careers in media will love the sections on ‘The Maverick Methods’ of job-hunting (Chapter 6) and ‘Work experience’ (Chapter 8)… Good luck! x
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