Lola Borg lecture

Freelance Journalist, Lola Borg held a lecture for all first year students about her experiences in the industry and what it takes to become a Freelance Journalist and pretty much work on your own terms.

She originally started working as a designer for 'Smash Hits' magazine, she said "I asked if I could start writing for them because the Journalists were having more fun!." She then started writing about Pop music.

Lola now works as a Freelance Journalist for Readers Digest and writes about all sorts of things from Health to Societies.

She showed us some interesting quotes from successful magazine editors in the industry:
"You can get away with having all kinds of things but what you really need is a little charm, that and a fundamental interest in people" - Victoria Harper, Grazia magazine.

Lola's top tips were:
*Plan ahead
*Be persistent
*Research
*Send examples of your work to gain work experience
*Expect to start off doing minimal tasks

It was really interesting to hear about some of her experiences and has really got me interested in magazine writing!

Accommodation

I think it's really awful how some Accommodation places treat students! I live with 17 other people, we have cleaners that come in every day and if we dont wash our pots every day they take them away and destroy them!. They're always moaning at us about something, whether its pots or just mess from the night out before. I don't see the point in having cleaners if they're just going to tell us to tidy up every day. Also someone threw a knife at the cupboard, it made the tiniest scratch and we're all getting £25 pounds taken out of our deposit!.

My flat mate can't afford to live here anymore and her parents phoned up and asked if she could terminate her contract for the end of term, the maintanence team went mad and told her to get her stuff out that day, not caring whether she had anywhere else to live they just removed all of her stuff, cleaned it and we have a new flat mate moving in this weekend!

I can't wait to get into a house next year and hopefully have some more independance.