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Whilst on placement, my time was split between two things: writing articles for the University's magazines and helping (more like shadowing people) at their radio station Spark.

Day One: Tuesday 07th May 2019
After a tour of the department, two friends and I sat down and was given a task.



And then we were off: searching through a site of no royalty showbiz images and forming our opinions on everyone's outfits (or in some cases, four outfits -- yes, Lady Gaga, I am looking at you).

Since so many celebs attended, we each spent a while picking out some royalty free images of the celebs that we were going to mention.

After looking at some images of celebs, 10am hit, which meant that we were called down to one of the radio studios to watch one of the shows that they do. I was a little bit nervous because I had the bare minimum knowledge (if that!) on the topic: The Eurovision Song Contest. I don't watch it, but after this show, I knew that I would.

We were shown the controls, the running order of everything, the script that the uni student had wrote, and everything else. Even now, I can't remember what buttons does what, but I do know that being on the radio is a lot harder than what it may initially seem.

The hour went by really quickly! I was sad to leave the studio because we were having so much fun! After the show had finished, we returned to our computers where we began to write our articles.

In the final version of my article, I mentioned Lady Gaga, Ashley Graham, Kendall and Kylie Jenner, Ezra Miller, Jared Leto, Aquaria, Violet Chachki and Zendaya. My friends and I ended up doing similar topics (an overview of the event) but whereas I focused on a range of celebs, the focus wasn't split as equally in theirs. This resulted in them being edited to focus only on Zendaya and Lady Gaga accordingly (we only discovered this when they were published).

It got to the end of the day (well, when we were supposed to leave [3pm]), and I knew that I had to fire out the rest of the article the next day. I didn't want to risk it becoming 'old news' and therefore not being published.

Day Two: Wednesday 08th May 2019
I arrived at 10am the next day, logged on and got straight to work. I was determined to finish that article; I refused to accept anything else.



Needless to say, I didn't need to worry about getting that article finished.

Because I finished it within an hour or so.

And then I also started another one -- and then finished that one too.

On top of that, I also started writing Ha'way Hannah during my lunch break too!

I know: I was on a roll! Yay me!


After finishing for the day, at home I continued to write the introduction to Ha'way Hannah.

Then my phone lit up.

I ignored it for a while (because I didn't want to get side tracked [this is a key habit of mine]) whilst I finished writing the intro.

Once I finished and published it to my blog, I finally looked at my phone. I went onto Twitter and saw this:

Tweet by Fashion_North

I was ecstatic (though this is still probably an understatment)! Something that I had wrote had actually been published!

Like wow!

I have always dreamed of something of mine being published professionally -- but never did I think that I would be this young, still at sixth form and have yet to grow and perfect my writing style!

For the rest of the week, my mood lifted so much! My mindset was incredibly positive; I was motivated, and I was ready to work.

I was ready to have more of my articles published.

So that’s what I did.

Well, I would have to write another first, of course.

For my next article, I began to wonder what was hot in the media; what was everyone talking about right now.

That's right.

Game of Thrones.

Now, since I haven’t watched all of the seasons (yet), the article would have to be something unrelated to the plot, which meant that I could easily comment on.

So guess what I decided to do?

I decided that it would be a good idea to write an article on the coffee up that made a cameo appearance in one of the episodes.

Yep, I know. Well done, Hannah! Writing on article that Twitter was already gossiping so much about! Yeah, that'll surely get published...

The more I thought about the star coffee cup whilst writing it, the quicker I realised something. Game of Thrones has a massive budget so how on Earth (or Westeros) did this cup manage to slip past the actors who were featured in that scene, the behind camera production workers and the editors?

Exactly. I go over it in my more detail in my article; I recommend you to read it (but after you have finished this blog post, of course).


Day Three: Thursday 09th May 2019
The majority of my final day was spent shadowing the radio presenter of Dance Revolution, and helping him prepare his tracks for his sample section, which airs every Friday at 19:30.

We then spent a couple of hours learning how he prepares the music for his show: what songs to put in what blocks; what songs to not put in some blocks; where he got his music from; etc.

On top of this, I did manage to finish another article as well.

It is a single review of ‘ME!’ by Taylor Swift featuring Brendon Urie of Panic! at the Disco.

Since this article was published after I had completed my placement, I was unable to get any more articles published after that (of course, unless I go back and do another placement).

But I am overjoyed that I have articles three written, published, and ready for an audience to read. They're definitely going in my portfolio.

Honestly, this feels like a small step in the right direction to achieve my dreams of becoming a published writer!

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Image credit for the post cover backgroud is here.

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Do you have any tips for me? You can comment them below or message me across social media!

That's all for now, guys!
Until next time,

Hannah x