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With four days to go until my dissertation deadline, I thought I would spend some time blogging, rather than writing my dissertation.

Maybe not the best idea, but at the moment graphs, numbers and quotes are giving me a headache (as well as the headache induced by chocolate).

It’s been a long, but amazing summer. I finished my stint at the BBC Science Unit last Friday, which was really sad. I had an amazing time, and learned an incredible amount.

Here’s what I have learned:

1. the cue to a radio package is EVERYTHING. With the right cue, the whole story just falls into place

2. writing a good cue is almost impossible

3. writing webtext to go with a piece of audio is also difficult.

4. practicing webtext writing is very useful as you had to write about one subject in short, medium and long pieces.

5. I LOVE WORKING IN RADIO

So, now I’m about to venture into the big wide world of work, here is what I learned about that:

1. It’s tough – there unfortunately isn’t much room for newbies: we have to find the cracks that need filling, and shape ourselves accordingly

2. There are very few cracks

3. Money goes out faster than it comes in (everyone knows this, but still, it’s not nice)

I do want to point anyone starting out in the world of broadcast media to this particular article. It’s a verbatim transcription of a speech made by Robert Krulwich, one of the double act that presents Radio Lab, my all-time favourite radio show.

This speech made me feel like everything I’ve been working on will one day be worth it.

What I learned today in particular:

1. Chocolate gives me a headache

2. Men and women think very differently

3. Young people and old people have a very different attitude to science, BUT if you put the old people back into their own young people shoes, they had exactly the same attitude as today’s young people… aka old people are more scared of science than young people, who don’t seem to think it is important in light of other big decisions they need to make…

4. I hate sitting still for longer than about 5minutes.

Image credit: Flickr jayneandd

Go to the orginal article here or listen below