What's next?

Happy New Year one and all! I took a bit of time off to relax after finishing my last internship, and obviously I was too lazy to even write a blog post in that time... Apologies! Here it is at last.

So what's next?
Nothing definite so far. I've been on the lookout for my next job for a while, but unfortunately I've had very little time, a lot to do, and Christmas in the way. To complicate matters a bit for myself, I've also decided to look for work in the UK this time, which means translating my CV to English and writing my cover letters in English, also pretty time consuming when you want things to be perfect.

I am mainly searching in the media business. Top of the list is - of course - the BBC. I've been keeping an eye on their opportunities for a while - they have a really interesting work experience programme, for which applications happen to open tomorrow. Of course I know I am aiming pretty high here - I estimate they receive about 8000 applications per position or thereabouts. But so be it - if you don't aim high, you can never hit high, right?

I'm also looking around for other opportunities, of course. I applied for work experience at NME magazine - something totally different, I am aware, but this whole year is about trying things, and I would really like to try both. As you have noticed, I like writing, but I also love television as a medium, and I hope I'll have a chance to explore both.

In any case, I am more and more convinced that my future lies somewhere in the media business. I especially love that balance between education and entertainment - a thing of beauty when kept well. It is important that people get informed correctly about things that go on in the world - but information goes down a lot easier when nicely packaged. I think the BBC is very good at keeping that balance most of the time. It's something I would love to be involved in. In a way, NME tries to do the same on a smaller scale, for a different public, and through a different medium. It would be interesting to be able to compare their methods.

Anyway, that's the dream scenario. Let's see how it goes! The search continues.

Easy does it

So, the decision had been made, I had come back home, and exams had just begun. The plan was to do a paid but irrelevant summer job (going on an Erasmus is not good for the funds, believe me) while looking out for relevant internships and placements starting from September. But first of all there were exams and a final paper to be completed. I was not on the lookout yet at all.

Plans about what to apply for were quite vague; I knew I would like to try something in media or journalism, and possibly also in a cultural sector. I knew I would love to find something abroad again, preferably in the UK or Ireland. My expectations, I think, were realistic: I expected the process of applying to be long and stressful, even more so because I'd never applied for a job before - except for some student jobs, but that can hardly be called applying at all. I believed it would be very hard to find a job in the fields I was aiming at, since they are notoriously popular and usually pretty saturated. And I predicted that I would probably not get paid for the kind of jobs that really interested me.

I was wrong on most points.

By mere chance, I stumbled upon an ad on my university website for an internship at La Monnaie Opera House in Brussels. The internship was at the Promotion & Communication department, it was unpaid (at least I was right about that part) and three-month-long starting from September. It seemed like a perfect opportunity, in short. I did not hesitate long and started working on an application (even though I still had a couple of exams to get through; the opera house would close over the summer holidays, and it was mid-June by this time).

Although I put quite some effort into it, looking back I would say I was not very well prepared - my CV, for one, was a little messy (no wonder, there was nothing very interesting to put on it except for the likely prospect of a BA degree), and my cover letter was written purely on intuition. (I can see that now, having just spent quite a while researching CV's and cover letters.)

But I just went ahead and applied anyway. I had a lot of excitement and little to lose; and apparently, sometimes that's enough.