CHAPTER ONE: THE INTERVIEW
On Tuesday me and my OB group went to interview Wil Harris, managing director of ChannelFlip. There's not even really much to say because it went so incredibly smoothly. To be fair, we did a lot of prep, so I feel it was well-deserved. I enjoyed chatting with Wil SO much, everything he had to say was genuinely fascinating for an Internet addict such as myself. The things he does as his career are the things I love as my hobbies, so discussing this with him was invaluable to me. Some of the questions I asked him were off-script and a bit divergent from our documentary title, but I just had to say them! And anyway, that's what editing is for :p I'm very proud of myself because I didn't let any nerves get the better of me, I enjoyed every moment and I'm pleased with how I came across in the footage. I know that it will be cracking stuff for our final project. The others were incredible at teching the whole thing too, they did it PERFECTLY and the main footage couldn't have come out any better. From a job point of view, whether or not I made a good impression I have no idea. I tried to be friendly and casual and funny and nice, but who knows. I feel like torturing myself analysing every word I said is futile, because I don't know what sort of person Wil likes. I can only hope it's me. When I told him I had applied for the job he said I had the right nails to work there (sparkly with multi coloured flowers), so maybe that'll work in my favour! As I said, futile. Just hoping and hoping.

CHAPTER TWO: HOME
On Friday me and Stuart came back to my house, so did Jake, as it's my birthday on Monday (tomorrow now) and the whole family came over yesterday to celebrate. There were:
Mum
Dad
Jake
Grandparents x4
Uncles x3
First cousin
Future aunt
Future first cousin
Second cousins x2
Great aunts x2
Great aunt's boyfriend
Grandma's cousin
Stuart

It was quite something. We had a lovely time and the work mum put into everything was just incredible. I've been telling her for weeks to get it all from Costco and she works from 7.30am to 6.30pm every day, but she made so so much. She did a glorious pescetarian dinner buffet and then she served homemade sparkly cupcakes, lemon and orange Jaffa cakes, pistachio and apricot mousses, Cointreau-soaked melon balls and a personalised Costco birthday cake. That was the only thing she bought in. She even made vol au vents! She's the best mum in the world. It was all delicious. Oh and her piece de resistance was this GLORIOUS vegetarian sweetie platter that she constructed to look like a cake! It was like a dream! I had a great time with all my relatives, they're all so hilarious and barmy and generous and ridiculous. Everything you could want from a family. Genuinely no idea how Stuart copes with them all!

CHAPTER THREE: THINGS TO COME
I mentioned in a previous blog how spectacular November should be. So firstly we had the prize winning ice skating, then there was the interview, then there was my family do, Monday is my actual birthday, and my best friend Samantha's, so we are having our traditional joint meal, Tuesday my parents are taking me and Stuart to my favourite very fancy seafood restaurant, Thursday is the joint birthday meal me and Nasima are having for the media girls as her birthday is just after mine, and Saturday.... I AM GOING TO DISNEYLAND PARIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This will get its own blogpost in the next few days. And then next Wednesday Stuart is taking me for afternoon tea in a posh boutique hotel as my birthday treat! And I also have a surprise of some sort on that day that I don't find out about till Monday...wow!!!!!!!!

As it's 3.19am that is all for now, more details soon! But here's some photos of the food today first. Byeee x

5am isn't fun when you're not watching the US election coverage!

In 5 hours me and my Online Broadcasting group will be off to central London to visit the HQ of the company that I've applied for the job at to interview the CEO for our project. It's 4.36am, and my being awake is not really ideal, but I think I'd have been kidding myself if I believed I would have slept through tonight. I haven't had a good night for about a week now and it wasn't gonna fix itself now. HO HUM.

Yesterday it occurred to me that maybe I was making too much of a big deal about this because after all, it's not like I've got a job or even an interview with them at this point, it might not have even occurred to WH that meeting me today is a mitigating factor, probably NO ONE thinks this is anything other than what is is. Until my lecturer came to give us our filming kit yesterday and before he left the room he said "Isn't it scary that your whole career might ride in tomorrow Jocy!" THANKS LEE, THANKS.

Ever since I tried to DO Media as an actual legitimate career, probably when I went to the Channel 4 open day in 2010, I have been told and told that your personality and just generally how you come across is so important because its a sociable industry, it's more often than not quite laid back and not stiff and starchy. People DO care about what the people they spend time around are like, they want to know that they're going to be bold and unique and fun and generally not annoying and lazy...this is why this is important to me! When WH goes through the CVs and cover letters he will be able to put a face and persona to the words on mine, and if he just point blank didn't like me then I'm going in the bin...only 16 people work at this place, they're not gonna want someone who isn't LIKED. I just want to be liked.

This seems very relevant particularly now given the subject of Charlie's recent vlog about human nature boiling down to us wanting to be liked. With this job, I know I have the skill-set, he can see that from my application, but today I have the opportunity to make myself likeable. That's a lot of pressure, as Charlie says. I'll put a link to his video here when I'm not on my phone.

I think I will try to get a bit more sleep now as I don't want to be yawning through the interview. I made myself a nice little flash card with the questions written on it. Surprisingly I'm not nervous at all really about the actual interview side of it. I think because I have faith in my improvisation ability I kind of just think, well what's the worst that can happen? No one wants to see me do badly and if something goes wrong I can stop and do that bit again. I do love that about editing. I feel a lot less stressed than I ever did about going on stage when I acted. I feel like I have more scope to be myself, because on stage you have to get a portrayal of someone/something PERFECT, and that's really not a thing that happens in real life. On screen I can just be myself and see what happens and keep the best of me in the final cut and put the not so great parts in the recycling bin. That's more like real life in my opinion, because we do stuff wrong and have to learn from it, get over it and then try to be a better version of ourself.

Anyway, I'm sure I'll write another blog later. I wonder what the tone of that one will be!!

Xxx



By the way look at this panorama I did of the tv studio at uni! This was when we did a practise set up this afternoon. I am so ecstatic that this is where I get to do my work...I was never a sit in a lecture theatre sort of person, and this is just what I always dreamed of when I was at school. I saw things like this when I went to uni open days in 2009 and I was so envious of the students looking so in their elements and at home in creative spaces like this, and now I'm one of them! I feel truly lucky.

It's past my bedtime!

I really cannot get to sleep. My brain just will not switch off.

On Tuesday I'm off to London with my aforementioned Online Broadcasting group to interview the CEO (will refer to him as WH) of the aforementioned company that I've applied to work at. The whole thing is actually the biggest coincidence. Basically, I found this job I wanted to apply to and as it was to do with a company that is basically an online broadcaster I went to tell my lecturer Lee about it. And it just so happened that WH is the guy that Lee met up with to pitch the idea of the Online Broadcasting module to earlier in the year, as it's a brand new module and it wanted industry level advice on it before he set it up I think. So this is where the link to my OB project (a documentary about video on demand affecting normal broadcasting schedules) and the job application is. It occurred to me today that ironically, I'm going to be interviewing the CEO - I hope in the not too distant future he will be interviewing me! It's very nerve-wracking. I want us to do Lee proud, I want us to do ourselves proud, and I want to make WH want to employ me. I am so worried about not coming across as my best. But then again I'm confident in my speaking on camera ability, and my self-confidence is rising back to how it was before I started getting anxiety problems last year, and I really feel like I can do well! I just have to make sure that I have confidence on the day, as I know with me that really comes through in my persona.

I'm really worried about what to wear! The last time I was so concerned about putting an outfit together was for my first day of uni. I wanted to look nice, but to show my personality effectively, but to not come across as totally bonkers straight away. My fashion sense is very much so varied, some days I want to be kind of conventional and classic by wearing skinny jeans, pumps and a plain tshirt. But other days I want to wear spotty tights and the jumper my mum knitted my dad in the 80s and my calf high Converses and my Green Day tshirt and my Pikachu skirt. On Tuesday I want to combine these two sides of my dress sense to show that I can be professional, but also that I am unique and interesting and a hoot. I'm thinking black skinny jeans, a blazer of some sort, a colourful top (possibly my purple one with little stars all over) and my high high top bright pink Converse. And of course I'll paint something cool on my nails. Part of me thinks I'm over thinking this but I know myself well enough to know that if I feel confident in the way I look I will be more myself on the day. My self-perception often dictates how I go by day to day things. Maybe that's bad, but I think that's what style has the power to do - develop your sense of self. That's what it means to me anyway.

Maybe I'll be able to sleep now I've typed everything I've been thinking about whilst laying here.

Goodnight all x

Or I could wear this fetching poncho!

I WON A COMPETITION!!!!!!

Before the other day, the only time I've ever done well in a competition is when in year 10 me and Becca and Eleanor wrote a poem in French called Poeme de Poubelle about a wheely bin who lived in Paris. We entered it into a national competition and came runners up and got to perform it at this fancy venue in London. We took our French teacher Mr Goodman (who I also found out was my cousin by marriage in year 9, awkward) and out mums, and we wore berets and read the poem to a big group of people. I remember feeling really narked about the girls who won, because they had written this song and it wasn't even good, they only won because they made up a bloody dance routine to go with it!!!!!!!!

I digress.

The other day Starbucks tweeted a photo of a red cup in a PLACE. And they said that if you guessed the location you could win tickets to go ice skating at the Natural History Museum. GOD ALONE KNOWS (well actually, no) how I knew it was Edinburgh Castle, but by jove I knew it. I've never been to Edinburgh Castle. I've never even been to Edinburgh. I've only been to Scotland once, and that was for two hours. BUT I JUST KNEW IT WAS EDINBURGH CASTLE. I to this very day have no recollection of ever seeing a photo of it before, but I must have done, because I knew that was what it looked like. Anyway, I won the tickets! HOORAH! It's very satisfying adding ice skating tickets to your basket on ticketmaster and then entering a special code and seeing the cost go from £61.00 to £00.00 :D

So that's exciting.

Another exciting thing is that I am really starting to love Adobe Illustrator. When I first started my Advanced Digital Imaging module I DETESTED it, I just COULD NOT DO IT, it made me want to curl up and cry. But in the last couple of weeks it has CLICKED because I've been practising lots, and this is something I did yesterday that I am proud of.

I'M SO PROUD :D

It's not perfect, but I think it is very good (if I do say so myself) and I think the colours and effects I used really reflect the quote, and Einstein's persona too. LOVELY :D

November could quite possibly be spectacular

CHAPTER ONE
I really have NO IDEA what this month is going to bring, but I have a feeling it's going to be good. I started my November in McClusky's of all places (pretty grimy club that I have refused to step foot in since January 2011) dressed up as a cat with some of my friends, who were dressed up as 3 generic zombies, a swan and dead Harry Potter. So hopefully November started as it means to go on. Although I'd probably prefer that I don't have to walk for 20 minutes at 1.30am in a 6 degree torrential downpour with no sleeves again.

CHAPTER TWO
Today my Online Broadcasting group is meeting to do a practise interview for when we meet Mr CEO of the Ultimate Dream Job company IN NINE DAYS. I'm not gonna lie, I'm shitting it. But I'm also very excited because I love my group and the best thing about it is that they all know how important this is to me, and they are being so amazing and encouraging about it, and are also putting up with my incessant ramblings/panic about it. I am very lucky to have such supportive people around me, because my main fear when I have to do group work is getting lumped with people who don't care. This is definitely not the case with them.

CHAPTER ONE REPRISE
Last night in the club made me really conscious of time. Last time I was there I was a fresher and I recognised everyone in the club pretty much because my uni is tiny, you know pretty much everyone in your year at least by face if not by name. Every time I'd turn I'd see someone to say hello to. Though last night, I must have seen about 6//7 people if that. It also stood out a lot when we were queuing to get in. The main (decent) club in the town had a fatal stabbing last week so it is now shut, so McClusky's was PACKED. But whilst we queued I didn't see a single person I knew (aside from Olivia who crops up everywhere bless her) and I just felt OLD. How rubbish is that. I still had a great night, but I was pining for first year when it was all new and exciting but also so familiar. This year I just kept looking at the people I was with (Tall, New, Della, James Harry Potter Peach and Stuart) and feeling upset that in 6 months it will all be over and it's gone too fast and I'm not ready to not be around them anymore. Too many of my blogs are about this. But too much of my time is spent thinking about it.

CHAPTER TWO REPRISE
I need to email Mr CEO's PA today to make our Official Appointment to interview him. As I'm the Project Coordinator. This is a thing that I am.

CHAPTER TWO EPILOGUE
I wanted to talk about some of the other cool things I am doing in November but I just remembered that last night Della accidentally tipped a drink down the left side of my head, so I need to go and wash my hair. I feel like being tall can be problematic for that reason in a club: people tend to walk with the drink above their head when they travel from one place to another, meaning that if that person is average height then my head is very close to the drink. Ho hum.