I found it difficult to accept what my days would look like at the start of the year, I found the workload exhausting. I had envisioned my year differently, but I think had I read a \u2018day in the life of\u2019 I would have been able to start the year realistically \u2013 perhaps even manage it better.<\/p>\n
Important to note: this will probably change each year depending on the lecturer\u2019s timetabling so is unlikely to be yours exactly. This was what I experienced in the first half of term which includes lectures that are not continued into the second term. This article is more to give you a glimpse of the workload.<\/p>\n
The days differ subject wise but in terms of structure it is a 9am \u2013 4.30\/5pm day with an hour for lunch.<\/p>\n
Production day<\/strong> \u2013 Tuesday and then in the spring term Tuesdays and Fridays.<\/p>\n We had shorthand in the mornings til 10am. Editor meetings began at 10am where that week\u2019s editorial team pitched the Newsroom\u2019s stories.<\/p>\n At the beginning of term everyone panicked and wrote their stories the night before which meant they didn\u2019t have anything to do other than edit other people\u2019s. There is the option of doing multiple stories or taking part in live stories if you do finish early.<\/p>\n By the end of term I was writing my story on production day after having completed all the interviews and planned it before.<\/p>\n Production day finished when the last article is done and published. No one leaves until everyone\u2019s articles are edited. Production days later in the term included Print (InDesign is used to create a newspaper) which meant that the deadline was always 4pm and articles are expected to be done way before that.<\/p>\n Wednesday <\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n 7am – Wake up, shower and get dressed. Put the Today programme on BBC Sounds on to find out the latest news, sometimes BBC Wales.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 8.20am \u2013 leave Roath for the walk into the Uni building in Central Square.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 9am \u2013 Shorthand with Sandra (80wpm)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 10am \u2013 Shorthand with Sandra (100wpm) or an hour break if not yet fast enough.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 11.30am \u2013 Public affairs lecture \u2013 learning about everything from the Monarchy, House of Lords to the structure of the education system. This lasted for around 1.30h.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1.30pm \u2013 lunch<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 2pm \u2013 looking for stories for next week or working on assessments. Would often use this time to interview people for my stories.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 4pm \u2013 Law lecture.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 5.30pm \u2013 walk home.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 6pm cook dinner.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 7pm \u2013 shorthand outline practise<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 8pm \u2013 chill before bed.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 9pm \u2013 bed, wind down.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 10pm – Sleep (I know its early but I was so exhausted I had to go to sleep this early!)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n While this is obviously not the everyday structure, we always had shorthand at the beginning of the day and some form of lecture or practical journalism workshop until about 4.30pm everyday.<\/p>\n I hope that gives you some insight!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I found it difficult to accept what my days would look like at the start of the year, I found the workload exhausting. I had envisioned my year differently, but […]","protected":false},"author":1772,"featured_media":15109,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[696],"tags":[358,1465],"class_list":["post-15108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-advice-for-students","tag-advice","tag-news-journalism"],"meta_box":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1772"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15110,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15108\/revisions\/15110"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}