I have plenty of qualities which make me employable. As well as being creative and having good writing skills, I am friendly, polite, hard working, a good communicator and I work well as part of a team. I also have good computer skills and I am familiar with Microsoft Office as well as Quark Express for layout and design.
My main interest is fashion and in my spare time I am studying at home for a diploma in fashion to increase my knowledge of the industry. I am also writing my dissertation on fashion journalism as this is the field I would like to work in. My dream job would be to write for a magazine like Glamour or Grazia.
I have many other interests as well as fashion so there is a broad variety of subjects I enjoy writing about. I am interested in celebrity gossip, health and fitness, beauty and travel. My hobbies include dancing, motorsports and horse riding when I have the opportunity.
In my four years at Napier University I have learnt a lot of skills which will be of great use to me in my future career and are relevant to magazine journalism. I have completed modules in Feature Writing and Magazine Writing which have helped me improve my writing skills. I have also completed a module in Production Journalism which gave me experience sub – editing and using Quark Express to layout pages.
In 3rd year we produced our own magazine called Impulse. This gave me a good insight into the magazine world and the challenges which can be faced. We had some initial problems trying to raise advertising revenue and it was a challenge to meet some deadlines but in the end everyone pulled together as a team and we completed our magazine.
This year at university we took part in three converged news days where we published stories online for print, radio and television. This has given me vital opportunities to find out what it is like working as part of a team in a newsroom and working to strict deadlines. I volunteered to be editor for one of these news days and I found the experience helpful as I was responsible for making sure every member of the team finished their story on time, and that we didn’t miss any vital news which broke that day.
The day before I believed we would maybe have problems as heavy snow was forecast in Edinburgh so I had planned ahead and told the people who lived further away to pick up their equipment the day before so they could send their stories to us if they could not make it in to class. Luckily the snow never arrived but we were prepared in case the scenario arose. I enjoyed being editor and keeping on top of what everyone else was doing. I think we did a good job and picked up on new stories, such as the Shannon Mathews court case verdict, as soon as they arose. I found it very straight forward being a member of the print team the next week as the only stories which I had to worry about were my own!
Last summer I did work experience at I-on Edinburgh magazine – a monthly publication which distributes 20,000 free copies a month in Edinburgh. I enjoyed this experience because it gave me a valuable insight into the magazine world which is the area of journalism that I would most like to work in when I graduate.
At I-on I spent a lot of my time researching to find out what was going on in Edinburgh that we could use in future issues. I also got to do some writing – I researched and wrote a story about fitness trends and wrote the interior design news for a couple of issues. My experiences at I-on gave me an idea of how difficult it is for magazines to continually come up with fresh ideas which will hold readers interest.
At the moment I am looking for more work experience so I can continue to build my portfolio. If you think you would like to hire me or help me gain more work experience then please email me:
