I don't want to hijack the thread, so I'll shut up in a minute, but the thing with this particular course was that it didn't
feel like a degree at all. Like I say, I literally jumped onto it as the first place in the region that'd have me in a mad panic not to miss the September boat after A-levels. I'd always been interested in radio, not so much the presentation side as writing and production, so I started on a broadcast journalism course. But it turned out that most of the content of the course was generic media-studies bollocks shared with various other courses and not particularly relevant to anything at all. It seemed to be there just to fill hours -- I mean, analysis of soap episodes?! It was far more of a practical course and had far more emphasis on TV than I thought it'd have. It was a rubbish choice and I only embarked on it because of the family "expecting" me to get a degree.
At the same time, I started volunteering with a community broadcaster in Manchester, just up the motorway. I loved it from the minute I stepped in the front door -- real freedom to report on what I felt was important, the chance to be creative and try new things that didn't always work, but at least I was learning something real, working with professionals, going out to big stories and mingling with a real broadcast media circus, getting my work put out on an FM broadcast station in a big city rather than sitting through droning lecturers whittering on about semiotic whatever in The Bill, or that radio lecturer whose sole industry experience was a few years doing the Sunday morning 6am God slot on BBC Radio Stoke (I kid you not). Through that work, I eventually started getting paid to make advertisements which kept me going after I got the boot from my job at the DIY shed. I've now made decent contacts in Manchester (which, unlike Stoke, actually has something resembling a media industry). I'm in touch with people within the BBC as well as various commercial and community radio organisations and to be frank, community broadcasting is where my heart's ended up -- it's something that really makes a difference to people's lives rather than just being a voice in a box in the corner. The contrast between my Manchester work and the crushing boredom of sitting in a room in Stoke being shown tapes of Children's BBC from 1994 is staggering.
