On Tuesday my class started with a project together with Mittmedia, the media group that owns the paper here in Sundsvall as well as many other papers. Our class got put in different groups with three or four in each and every group got one question to work with and try to answer from Tuesday to Thursday. My group got the question: "How can Mittmedias papers earn more money by selling more place on their website to advertisers but still keep their reputation as a serious paper?". I stood for making some interviews with people knowledgeable about the field. My two groupmates stood for interviewing random people of different ages for statistics.
We worked with it Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning. We were going to have our seminars at 13.00 but first I had an interview to do. For once I was the one being interviewed. The magazine that I hoped to make my intership next semester at was going to interview me. The interview would be at 12.45 so I left a bit early to have time to eat. At 11.50 I stood in the queue in the restaurant, however as it was pancakes the queue was twice as long as normal. It took almost thirty minutes to get my food, by then it was 12.20 so I ate my pancakes in ten minutes.
At 12.30 I headed into the little room that I had booked so I wouldn't get annoyed and disturbed by anyone passing by. I wanted 15 minutes to calm down and get ready to be interviewed. Being calm and not sounding nervous is two of the most important things to make a trustworthy impression, that goes both for acting and interviews. I also took my time to read through my notes of things that I should remember to mention and such. They called at 12.46, I know the exact time as I sat there watching my phone from 12.44 and on.
During the interview we talked about stuff like who I was, what I liked in journalism and what I expected to do while working there. They were two talking to me on the other side of the phone, both would be my bosses if I ended up at Fokus. After fifteen minutes we finished the interview. First they said that they would tell me if I got the place before next Saturday unless I wanted it to be earlier. Actually I did, and as they said had asked me and I had a legit reason I decided to say so. I have also applied to the papers Dagens Nyheter and Aftonbladet and I intended to call them after the interview with Fokus depending on how it went. I hoped to get the place at Fokus but every day I waited for Fokus to answer getting a place at one of the other papers would become harder and harder. The two people at Fokus understood this very well and told me that they would call me on Monday at the latest, which I was happy with.
A few minutes late I went back into the classroom where our seminars were about to start. When I booked the interview with Fokus the seminars were planned to start at 13.15. The people from Mittmedia understood this however and didn't mind me being a bit late. It actually hadn't started when I went into the classroom, there was some trouble with the projector. While waiting I noticed that I had a new mail. I checked it and it turned out to be from my teacher who had finally given me a grade on my two articles in the magazine Sundsvall 42 that we worked with two weeks ago, I should have gotten it sooner but for some reason she hadn't looked at it yet, me not handing in or she losing it I don't know but it doesn't really matter. The grades were A and B, my first A ever! Probably because I wrote about e-sports, which I find interesting. Ten minutes later my phone started ringing again, I noticed that it was Fokus so I headed out to answer it thinking that they had forgotten to ask me something.
After five minutes I went back into the classroom and noticed that the woman from Mittmedia was about to start speaking. I didn't care very much and high-fived my classmate closest to the door to her surprise. I think that can be accepted when you just got the internship that you really hoped for. What could have taken til Monday just took ten minutes, I guess I made a quite good impression during the interview. Next semester: Fokus!
The woman from Mittmedia didn't get annoyed, instead she congratulated me and started asking all of us if we had our next semester fixed and in that case where. After that break she finished her introduction and we held our seminars. All groups got excellent feedback so that didn't exactly lower my mood either, it was the finish of a really wonderful day in school.
To make it even better I had to tell my teacher that I got the job three times before he believed me. Not only because the reply came after ten minutes, according to him Fokus usually prefer people who are older and have some kind of university education in sociology or similar stuff. When Fokus and I set the time for the interview I was in a very good mood. My teacher tried to bring me down a bit and asked me how I could be so sure that I'd get the spot and that an interview was only half-way. Saying "Told you so" felt really really great.
In the evening my mood was so good that I did almost all the quite boring work that I had to do for friday so that my friday was almost free, resulting in me going to bed at around 03.30, which I really didn't mind after such a day.
The seconds after the man who interviewed me called again and told me I got the job has to be some of the best seconds in my life, it competes for first place with when I got the call that I'll get the job as the woodpecker in the Treo advertisement that you might know about and my joy when I won the Nordic championship in chess for the first time, I think the last memory wins tho.
One last thing: I started a course in research journalistics today. The course is about finding something wrong in some way and looking into that. It can be anything. If you've noticed something you find wrong or just odd, send a mail to [email protected]! All ideas are good ideas, even if you personally think they're ridiculous.
Wow, that was a long post.
Happy and relaxed after a great week