Birds, smoke and sponges.

I moved to the big smoke about 6 weeks ago.

Life has been much the same and very different since.

The journalism course that I am doing is the thing that is most different. When I did English Literature in York, there was very little contact time with the lecturers and class time was even less.

It is a weird and gratifying experience to have so much contact with the people teaching you, who also have a lot of time for their students.

I realise the hours of the classroom are needed because we are on an intensive one year course to teach something completely different (in some cases) to what we have done before. We are being taught a profession.

I sometimes feel very dazed by all of it; it is easy to become overwhelmed with the information being given to us. All of it is essential, and more importantly it is actually worth knowing. I couldn’t always say the same for Eng Lit.

It’s slowly beginning to seep in though. Learning short hand is becoming easier. At first all I saw were random symbols.

Then I saw images like birds and trees (if you’re pushing the imagination) in those symbols. But now I am beginning to see the formation of words with the birds and the trees.

I am not entirely sure about the writing side of journalism yet. I realise that I must have a niche for writing to some degree or I would not be here. Ho hum.

Sometimes though, I do feel a little out of my depth. Especially when our lecturer Chris Horrie is teaching us, there is a lot of information to absorb. I must become sponge like.

I feel like there is a lot of history and general culture that I have to study as well to maintain a realistic grasp of today’s news. You can’t really have one without the other.

Back to the books then.