Day-to-day life at university

Well … Since my last post I have been so so busy! I gained a two months paid placement from Vodafone with the charity of my dreams – The Tottenham Hotspur Foundation so I have been preparing for this and started on the 12th January. Verdict after the first week? I absolutely love it! I am going to be working on some fantastic projects with some brilliant people. Despite this blog unfortunately looking rather bare recently, I have not abandoned blogging – nothing of the sort – I have simple been using the blog that Vodafone set up for me to keep the world posted on my placement so I will be mainly using this blog page now so please follow me at :

http://worldofdifference.vodafone.co.uk/uk/nicola-banks/

I’m having a fantastic time so far so make sure you keep track on the above address.

So for now - I shall see you on the other site.

Looking at my last post date is rather demoralising … it was quite a while ago and I started thinking why this was. Blogging needs inspiration, particularly the style of my blogging, i discuss events in my life and currently my days are considerably similar and repetitive! They consist of job hunting and this can only be discussed so far!

Employment is such a topical subject at the moment and is one that I am at the centre of, simply due to the fact that it is a struggle to find a suitable job! This, at times, has been more than demoralising! It’s important to push past this though and more importantly … the blogging must continue despite the lack of inspiration.

When I logged on to my blog I suddenly realised my website title was not particularly appropriate anymore as I am now not at university, but am instead a graduate. This made me start to think about what being a graduate offers, the benefits are extensive and having a degree throughout your life opens opportunities otherwise not available. Before I went to university I felt a main benefit was that having a degree meant gaining a job easier when applying, but this has not necessarily been the case. The amount of jobs I can apply for is extensive, for example when companies are requesting higher level education, but these jobs are just not cropping up as much as they used to. This dreaded word…recession…springs to mind again.

The stage where many graduates are at now is difficult, it is the unknown that I am less comfortable with, for example, not knowing when I will be employed, a week, a month, six months. This though, is all temporary and will pass, but having a degree is not, that is permanent which is, I feel, the real benefit of a degree.

Swine flu is by far the most talked about topic of the last two weeks. It has been demonstrated in Mexico that the flu is fatal and can cause a national pandemic so should be treated with real concern. Yet this has not been the case within the UK. Yes, cases have been confirmed in the UK but these are very mild and all have recovered well, but the media headlines are still incredibly negative. The last few days has seen newspapers reporting millions could die in Britain due to swine flu yet health officials have reported that currently, swine flu in the UK is not as threatening as has been seen in Mexico. Yet someone coughs or sneezes and the room clears. So is this due to a misconception of swine flu due to not enough precise information from health officials, or is it enhancement and ultimately scare mongering by the media? Only now is it just starting to filter through the media that it is not as worrying as initally thought yet this has actually been known longer than the media suggests.

This may sound as if I am attacking the media but this is not necessarily the case. Our society is quick to criticise and we’re growing into a culture of blame, so if the media did not portray this infection as serious and threatening and it did infact have similar effects to that in Mexico, there would uproar that we were not correctly informed and notified of the seriousness of the issue. Yet when they do portray the issue in a suitable light they are accused of scaremonging?

This is important to consider as a PR professional, how would a situation like this be approached? At university we have had many lectures and seminars regarding crisis management but ultimately, every situation needs to be dealt with differently. Do you bombard the public with information and potentially worry the nation unecessarily or do you wait until the crisis escalates and is possibly too late to inform people of the seriousness and the ways in which to prevent it. It’s a difficult question and one I ask you, how would you approach the issue of swine flu in the media?

Many students at level 3 are starting to relax and feel that the hard work has finally eased. I have completed my dissertation, my portfolio of achievements and a strategic human resource management assignment with only an exam to go, which feels brilliant to have completed but the more I think about it, it’s no time to start relaxing. Looking for a job to start your career is difficult enough but the recession and media perception of the struggle is particularly demotivating and makes myself and many other thousands of imminent graduates slightly worried. There are fewer jobs to apply for and more people are applying for the jobs that are available. This makes the likeliness of getting a job within the typical ‘6 month’ period quite low.

This leads to the questions…what next? My thoughts are that experience is important so I aim to either gain numerous work experience placements or more preferably, gain temporary jobs whilst continuing to search for permanent jobs. Finding this job could take quite some time but the bright outlook is that many news articles have claimed that companies are looking to buy their way out of the recession through effective and frequent public relations. If this is the case and contracts with companies continue to rise there is hope for graduates and myself yet!

Well…as the title says, technology is a very difficult thing, great, but often difficult! My lack of posts recently is not only due to doing my dissertation and successfully handing it in, but also the lack of internet. It is unfortunately not working at my home in Essex which is causing quite a few problems as you can imagine, so the local town library has become a haven for me (despite how slow the internet speed is!)

As I mentioned, I recently handed in my dissertation which was possibly one of my biggest achievements, it was as thick as a dictionary and was very satisfying to see it all being printed and put together! Quite remarkable how much has been achieved since the summer, graduation is looming (along with the PPE portfolio, as always!) and now the prospect of job hunting is becoming quite real! I have currently only applied for one job, a graduate scheme, which looks fantastic! (I find out on Friday if I have made the telephone interview stage) Despite this, the likeliness of me actually getting the first job I apply for out of hundreds of people is quite low! Hunting for a job to start my career is actually quite daunting and within the recession, difficult too! The combination of an increasing level of graduates and a very serious recession is not a positive one for people such as myself but optimism must not fade and searching for the right job to start my career may take a long while, but I know it will all be worth it!

I can’t believe how long it’s been since i’ve written a new blog post! The past few months have completely run away with me, as mentioned in my last post, university work is so very busy but full of achievement. I am already aware of the amount of work that has been completed but also I am realising the amount to do by the end of April. Organisation is still at the top of my priority list to ensure good time management and now … so is updating my blog! I enjoy blogging and writting my thoughts and opinions on university, a lot of the time it helps to put different aspects into perspective and allows me to reflect!

So until my next blog … (which will now be very soon!)

Already the clock is ticking…and it feels like a very loud and very big clock!

During the summer I started researching for my dissertation and getting my head around level 3 and the portfolio etc. This was a good move and I am so pleased that I did this as already I feel that I need all the time available to me to be able to ensure good grades, which is inevitably, my overall aim from university!

Organisation has always been a strength of mine (and to be honest, I also quite enjoy it) and this is proving to be a vital skill even at this early stage, there are still different tutors for different modules but with different work groups in different tutor groups and this year and scheduled time is not on the agenda with three out of four modules, tutor meetings are scheduled when needed so organisation is important to ensure that everyone is seen and meetings commence when necessary etc. I personally find this a lot more useful as I feel I have the support, but also that I can simply get on and do the work (as I mentioned, we need all available time we can get!)

So level 3 has started with a big bang and I feel the pressure, but at the moment it’s the motivating kind and not the pulling my hair out kind, so currently, so far so good!

Throughout both level one and two of university I have really struggled to find short-term placements, I have contacted literally hundreds of companies and the majority of these do not run a placement scheme or the opposite…are full with students and they do not need anymore! I luckily had a placement last year for level 1 but this wasn’t to due to my searching tactics, I was very lucky to have a contact who helped find the placement for me!

Placements have, to be honest, been so frustrating for the past two years! After all of this, you can imagine my excited when I finally find a placement at a very successful company in a very smart building and part of London! (The location is all part of the appeal!) I am currently on my placement now for two weeks and I am thoroughly enjoying it! The company culture and people are lovely and I am carrying out typical PR activities (inevitable i suppose!) My main point for this post is that for the past two years I have felt like giving up searching for placements but thankfully I didn’t as I finally crossed paths with a brilliant company and placement! Never stop searching…one will come along in the end.

The dissertation has always been quite a daunting prospect but it was always the composition of the actual research and text that I felt would be difficult but I was quite surprised with the amount of time I have been spending on choosing a suitable topic. I have found myself torn between a few topics to base the dissertation on. I never presumed I would decide a topic within a few hours but I have been researching for a few weeks now, all to decide on an initial topic and suitable question. Now I realise that it was always going to be a difficult process as the dissertation is not a typical 3000 word essay style question, there needs to enough research available to create credible references and the question needs to allow for 15,000 words to be discussed and concluded which means some questions aren’t suitable as they will simply not generate enough interest and information.

This is all inevitably quite an eye-opener as it shows the amount of work needed throughout the dissertation if deciding a topic can consume this amount of time. Bearing in mind this is one topic out of a seven to be completed…I am quite happy I have started early…I think i’m going to appreciate these few months of researching and planning leading up to April and May next year!