My Last Day at Press Gazette

So that's it. It's finished. No more offices and reasonably early mornings for me. Originally I was meant only to be here for a week but I think somebody couldn't make it so they said I could do the second.

It's been very useful. I know how a proper magazine works and felt that I had some kind of input in its content. The first time I did work experience was with TNT magazine, which when I look back on was actually quite useful. However at that point I had no journalism training whatsoever, so I was caught a little bit cold with how I was supposed to style my writing and having to go out and interview people out on the street.

Second time was with FHM magazine. My advice? Don't bother with work experience at the really big consumer magazines like this, especially if they have an organised scheme. It's good for your CV, but I didn't take much out of it at all. The only memory I have was going around the office passing out the mail and finding out that the reviewers get lots of freebies.

This was better. It's going to help with me when I get serious with the second part of the postgraduate course. For example, I hate phoning people. I've never been any good with it. But I've done a lot of it these two weeks, either with trying to get information about the Freedom of Information Act petition or the work experience feature they are doing in a 'youth' issue in a couple of weeks.

It made me realise that the career is something that I am well capable of doing. I've always been able to write pretty well but I think I'm able to do some good journalistic work once I'm let loose on the world.