An Open Letter to University Students

Dear Students,
Your second or third attempt at freshers week is over, I hope it was even more successful than the first time round. You've probably had a chance to meet all your lecturers and had a chance to decide which seminars you will be avoiding. *curse you 9am lectures!*

This is the year that really starts to matter. In most cases, from now on, all of your grades count towards your final result. This is also the time to do all the fun things you always wanted to do because next year all your free time will be spent in 24hr Libraries and cafes trying to squeeze 10000 words into a dissertation.

My best advice that I can give you at this early stage in the year is to get a job. Any job. Preferably one that pays you, probably as a barista or in a shop. Your second year is all about building your CV while you have time and resources on your side.

There isn't a ticket into the job market. A levels, degree, good grade, respectable university, they're all just the building blocks of your CV and you need more. Start demonstrating what you want to do.  If you don't know what to do, do things you like so that your CV reflects who you are. Having that first job or two will give you that much leverage once you graduate.

You might have spent most of your student loan on a bass guitar (you know who you are), but you can still survive on ramen noodles until Christmas. If you can live without a paying job, get an internship or placement in the industry you prefer. Sometimes this is hard to do in your university town.

I know about publishing, because that is what I wanted to do, so I can only advise on that, but it applies to everyone really. I was amazed once I got to London that there were at least three places I could have worked while at uni and I had no idea, because I never looked. Start your research NOW. look for work in your university town and at home.

My greatest regret is that I didn't do more to prepare for the real world while at Uni. Bills, rent, learning to drink jager without dying, all good lessons. But what I really should have been doing is writing for my uni magazine, working in the SU, building a blog! Anything to prove to my employers that I want to be in their industry. In publishing the consistent item on a job description is that the candidate must 'demonstrate their passion for books'. So go demonstrate any way you can.

If there just isnt time between sports, drinking and essays, use the holidays to do internship placements instead of slobbing around in your pjs. Try freelancing if you prefer the flexibility.

I cannot stress how much easier your graduate life will be if you work while at uni.

Good luck with your cover letters!

InternInBooks

One Lovely Blog

http://somerville66.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/one-lovely-blog.html

I recently got tagged in a One Lovely Blog award by Somerville66 (Liz Lloyd.) you can click on her name to see her post on One Lovely Blogs! Thanks Liz! xxx

Here are the rules for the One Lovely Blog Award:
Thank the person that nominated you and link back to that blog.  
Share seven things about yourself – see below. 
Nominate 15 bloggers you admire – also listed below. 
Contact your bloggers to let them know you've tagged them for the ONE LOVELY BLOG AWARD If I've nominated your blog, please don't feel under any obligation to join in.  I am just pleased to recommend your blog here.

Here are seven things about ME:

I grew up in Istanbul, Turkey. Until I was 11 when I came to the UK to take my exams. My mum still lives in Turkey with my step-dad while my dad, my sister and I all live here. I speak very bad, broken Turkish, and I forget it while I'm in England but I try to learn it when I'm home for holidays.

I am a publishing Intern in London and have been working in publishing gaining experience for 12 months! 

I had a pretty eclectic schooling let's go backwards: I went to Hurstpierpoint college, a boarding school in sussex, for four years, one year at Oundle school in Peterborough, 2 years at Reigate St Mary's Prep school, a year at MIA - an American academy in Istanbul which one day was mysteriously closed by the police for having no permits and IICS an international school in Istanbul. CRAZY.

I love to dance. I can tango, but my favorite is modern jive, or Ceroc dancing, which is loads of fun. I like it because they play pop music with a beat and so it is always really good fun. I also love to go to the Rivoli ballroom, they have a Jive night there once a month with live music and dancing.

I love to cook, I follow recipes most of the time but I can judge things to my own taste as well. I really like to feed other people and see them say how lovely it is. I'm my worst critic and am always trying to get better. I'd have to thank my other half for being one reason why my cooking has improved over the last few years. He always needs feeding when he comes over, so I have become more experimental and more daring and had a lot more reason to practice. He is also on a paelo diet so I have to really get creative to make something delicious we both like.

One of my favourite and most cathartic things to do is to reorganise my bookshelves. I always feel a huge sense of accomplishment when they are newly ordered and have had the dust shaken off them. I don't have a lot of space so I also have trinkets and nicknaks filling the shelf too. Maybe I'll do that today...

I can't get enough of period dramas. Any thing from Lark Rise to Candleford to the Illusionist. I was raised on a TV diet of Pride and Prejudice and Tess of the Durbervilles. Now that I am older I love to read those stories too but when it comes to movies, I cannot resist a spot of old time fashion.

Here are my recommendations! Go look at them. Immediately.

Chic It Yourself
Up The Hill And Round The Bend
A Seasonal Cook in Turkey
Catherine Bennett
Dark Readers
Damn Interesting
Bookables
Books, Biscuits, and tea
little paper pages
The Hungry Reader
So Many books So Little Time
the thrifty garden/home
eat like a girl
Writers and Artists Blog

Interning at Movellas

I was an intern at Movellas in June 2014 for three weeks. If anyone is interested in publishing internships Movellas is an awesome place to start. Movellas is a teen story-sharing community. In a nutshell, teens can write and publish their own stories on the site. Other teens read, comment and offer constructive criticism. The company has gone from strength to strength and now has over 250,000 active users a month. Users post 5,000 comments a day and there are 10,000 hours of daily engagement on the site.

So why choose Movellas? Well, there are a couple things that you want from an internship:

1) A really cool team. If you can't get along with the people that you're working with then it is really tough to drag yourself into work every day. I loved working at Movellas.  At the moment the team is in Soho, central London in a very trendy office. There are five members of staff who are all lovely and the benefit of being one of five is that the CEO of the company is there as well as your direct bosses. Publishing is a small world, so it is always good to be noticed by the whole company rather than just your manager.

2) Expenses. Preferably, you really want to be looking for paid internships, especially in London as it is pretty costly. But often expenses only internships might be the only thing available. Paid internships also tend to have a more rigorous interview process and want people with more experience.  Having said that, Movellas want good interns to work for them. They can be a great place to gain that experience. PLUS digital publishing is a very good place to start out and could give you the edge over other people. Movellas pay travel and lunch expenses which is V. generous considering it is all London prices. They were also understanding and flexible about peak times and peak prices.

3) Cool Factor. Movellas is swimming in cool. But what I mean by Cool Factor is totally subjective. you have to enjoy the work that you are doing and that means being interested in what the company is doing. Movellas has alot of exciting and new things happening at the moment and it was easy to be enthusiastic and pleased about the projects they are working on. You need this in any job, if you're not excited about where the company is going, you're unlikely going to enjoy your time there. For me that meant getting excited about Movella's engagement with their users.

4) Work. The worst thing in the world, is going into an internship and the whole experience being a waste of time. Movellas always have things for the interns to do, if you lend yourself to one particular skill or another, they will ask you to do more of it.

Movellas was such a great opportunity for me, I learned so much and highly recommend it as an internship placement. Movellas is awesome. As Google would say: +1

Here are just a few things I got to do while at Movellas:

I wrote a blog post introducing a Movellas author getting published on amazon: http://www.movellas.com/blog/show/201406241216248575/movellas-author-gets-published-on-amazon

A round-up for sugarscape.com of 8 alternate endings to The Fault in Our Stars
http://www.sugarscape.com/main-topics/book-club/1047192/top-8-alternate-endings-fault-our-stars-fan-fic

Announced the winners of competitions: The Forever song.
http://www.movellas.com/blog/show/201406271135518662/the-forever-song-illustration-competition-results

My TFIOS movie review also featured on Movellas
http://www.movellas.com/blog/show/201406181650227291/movie-review-4-the-fault-in-the-stars-spoilers

Composed a quiz.
http://www.movellas.com/blog/show/201406201433401186/are-you-a-john-green-super-fan

Was hilarious.
http://www.movellas.com/blog/show/201406251758255238/funny-friday-face-the-boggart

I proofread and edited the full manuscript of The Last Girl by Riley Shasteen. I also helped to publish it through Amazon Kindle.  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L8CUD6A

Everyone's a critic

This is the interpretation of a few things that interns hear all the time:

"So . . . is there a job at the end of this one?" - The person who says this has probably seen 'Pursuit of Happiness' or 'The Internship'. In these movies there is a job opening and a group of people have a competitive incentive to be the best. The winner - gets the job. In the US. My catch phrase at the moment is 'right place, right time'.  That's pretty much how internships in the UK works. There might be a job that comes up while you are interning at one company or another, but it is not guaranteed.  And even if a job does come up and you apply for it, you are only marginally ahead of the other applicants. Still, you have the experience and the name for your CV.

Right?

"You'll definitely get a job. You have loads of experience" - Well . . . that's half right. Collecting internships and company names is fantastic for the CV but a good name does not a good internship make.  Some companies have it right, they figure out how interns will help them, and they have specific tasks for the interns to do and it works well for everyone. We are a step closer to a job because (hopefully) we learnt something. But some companies, really don't want or need interns, and we end up wasting our time and wasting the company's time. This has only come up twice for me personally, and it means my CV is nice and full, but there are two big holes of time where I experienced very little. At best you learn about the company, you get to handle some real projects, and you love making the tea every day.  But at worst, you sit at a desk being invisible, while the workings of the office are jealously guarded, and no one has the time to spend ten minutes explaining how to do something that might actually make their lives easier. 'Quality not quantity'.

"How is your Volunteer work going?" - Wooosaaaah.  It is true, from a tax point of view, you are volunteering. But saying this to an intern makes it sound like we arn't trying.  This person has probably forgotten what it is like to come out of uni, be back at your parents house, and it is time to get a job.  But the right job.  One where you get to cash in on your newly purchased education. Sometimes, you just have to work for free. Try to stay calm when people don't understand what you are trying to do. And for those of you who know an intern: don't call it volunteering, it hurts our feelings. :)

"How long have you been an intern?" - This goes back to quality verses quantity.  I know interns who have been working for YEARS, through college, through uni, through various gap years and between jobs. Eventually though, something's got to give. Option 1) You get a job, congratulations! The paycheck doesn't come till after your first month of work so be careful not to loosen the belt quite yet. Option 2) You try something new, obviously this interning thing isn't making you stand out. You shell out money on publishing courses and you network your way around literary events snooping out the editors to hob nob your way in. Option 3) Give up, this industry isn't for you and it is starting to look bad that you haven't got a job yet.

I felt like giving up this month.  But I got two great pieces of advice:

Look back at your life forty years from now, if you give up and take any old job. Would you be proud that you gave up now? That once you had aspirations to be in publishing? The intern behind you who stuck it out for one more month got your dream job. How does that feel?

Now more than ever is the time to persevere. Look how far you have come. Use hindsight to make your decisions now.

I have two copies of my CV on the wall. The first one I wrote out of Uni and the one I take to interviews. I love to see how far I have come.

Everyone will have an opinion on what you are doing, some don't understand, some won't understand, but most think it's admirable and will try help and support you.

But that is a whole other blog . . .