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To my surprise, a couple of days before graduation I received a text from a friend of mine saying “congrats on the award”… to which I replied “what award?”… my name was apparently in the graduation guide/booklet thing handed out to everybody attending graduation.

“You won some kind of radio award”, he said.

Eh? Surely I would know if I’d won some kind of radio award? The next day, another friend said they’d seen it on their graduation and it was part of ‘a long list of awards’ so I didn’t think too much of it.

Graduation day rolled around and I was quick to flick through my booklet to see what it was that I’d be awarded? The answer - the only radio award going. The Sun FM Radio Prize, which was the award from the city’s biggest radio station, and it was only awarded to one student each year.

I still had no idea why I’d won it though, or when, or how. So I e-mailed my tutor and I’ve only just go this e-mail back…

Hi Rob,

Congratualtions.
The award was awarded for outstanding achievement at Level 3. You got the highest mark on the MAC391 module [which is the dissertation module that runs throughout the year], indeed the highest mark achieved by any student during my time at the Uni.

It was extremely well deserved. Good luck for the future, whatever your plans.

Regards,

…….

OUTSTANDING achievement in my final year. Made even better by the fact that this particular lecturer has been around since before I was at the uni… so my mark was the best in at least the past three years. Wow.

This has been really weird because I’ve never won an award of any type throughout school (I was always close) or in sport (I was never close) or in anything really.

I’m hoping this award, received by only one student out of hundreds of media students at my uni each year, might be the difference between a job interview and being ignored!

Apologies for more self indulgence, but fuck it, I won an award. Why wouldn’t I write about it?

“It’s a celebration, bitches!!!”

I been waiting since Day 1 of Uni for the chance to wear that much orange in public.

Shame I didn’t get the orange hat that Kate Adie had. But I will one day.

Yesterday I found out my final marks for my three-year degree at Sunderland Uni.

And the news was all good. I bagged myself ‘First Class Honours’ (the highest mark attainable, which around 12% of graduates across the country receive) and, to my surprise, my dissertation was awarded 90% (which is 20% higher than the boundary). To say that I’m proud or chuffed is a bit of an understatement really.

I’ve been waiting for these marks to arrive for some time, and I’ve had countless e-mails knocked back saying they’ll be ready ’soon’, but I had no idea they would arrive through post. I’ve been without my phone (broken) for the past week, so when all my friends received their results through the post on Saturday morning I was frantically ringing my house back in York to have my mum check the mail. Except she wasn’t in. She wasn’t in all day! It wasn’t until 7pm that night whilst at work that I managed to get in touch with her, borrowing someone else’s phone and sat in a room full of furniture with a pen and paper at the ready. It was a pretty weird way to receive grades that you’ve been seeking for the majority of your adult life. My mum read out dozens of numbers and grades before eventually setting her eyes on the bottom of the letter to tell me that I had got ‘first class honours’. I don’t think she’d ever heard me swear as much in 21 years as she did in the following 21 seconds, but I’m sure she understands I meant well.

Whilst I’m not entirely surprised that I got a first, because my grades this year have been so much better than my first two years, I wasn’t expecting it. I had told myself at the start of the year that I wanted a 2:1 minimum (given that I had averaged those marks in my first and second years), but even then a 2:1 is a fairly standard mark. Not to discredit anyone who has received that this year, but contrary to 12% of people across the country who receive first class honours, almost 75% of UK graduates receive second class honours. The difference between the two boundaries is a big one, whilst the boundaries are fairly tight, and whilst a degree is a degree I wouldn’t want potential employers to look at me as ‘just another one of the 75%’ getting second class honours.

Forgive me if that sounds pretentious.

While getting the first is a massive achievement, and I’ve had so many people give me a big pat on the back, I know that in media that I’m still very far from where I need to be and that all the hard work still lies ahead. Unfortunately in media nothing falls at your feet, unlike some courses where you can guarantee yourself a job almost straight after university the sad reality is that nobody is waiting at the finish line for you. But, to be quite frank, where’s the fun in that?

I will revel in my degree joy for the next week or two, and then it’s time to make some things happen. I’m going to have to get more aggressive with applying for jobs, put myself about for some voluntary work experience and I’ve already got some ideas for independent projects which I’m sure I’ll write about on here when they become more than just pipe dreams. For now though, I will kick back and enjoy the fact that Sunderland Uni consider me to be ‘first class’.

Hope everyone else got the grades they wanted!

That’s it.

The three years are up.

I’m finished with university.

Done. Through. Over. Completed. Fulfilled.

However its worded… my stint at Sunderland Uni is now behind me. I’m not sure how I feel about it really. May has been a bit of a hectic month really, because I’ve had all my dissertation stuff to finish… I’ve had so many essays and evaluations to hand in its been ridiculous… and I’ve also been on air every weekday and at work every weekend. I just haven’t had time to stop and think “its all over soon”.

And it wasn’t until me and Danny left the studio for the last time today that I kind of realised “thats it - time to start a new chapter”.

And I’ve no idea where that next chapter will be. Or what it’ll be.

Some of my best friends from the past three years will now head home or to new cities and countries to start their next avenues of life and all I can say is that I wish them all the best. I’m not one for saying goodbyes, because you don’t call time on friendships, in fact distance and time apart will only make you appreciate them more (as I learnt of my friends in York when I came up to Sunderland). I was saying to Danny today that I’m intrigued as to where each and every one of them will go next with their careers and with their lives… because every one of them has been brilliant and they all deserve to move on to great things… and I’m sure they all will.

The uncertainty of what is next is quite scary, but I’m sure there will be something. I’m leaving uni with good grades and without blowing my own trumpet I’m good at whatever I decide to knuckle down at. Whether I get a job in the radio/media like I want now, or whether I don’t and I end up travelling, I’m sure I will enjoy whatever I end up doing!

So… Prague next month with the lads for our last hurrah. Euro 2008. Graduation. Job hunting. Holidaying in the south of Spain with family and then who knows… if you know me then I’m sure you’ll find out… and if you’re one of my uni mates (or just anyone I’ve met through uni) then don’t be a stranger, keep me up to date with what you’re doing because I’m genuinely interested…

Right, well with uni done and dusted I guess the summer starts now!

Sure I’ll have more uni recaps and stories to reflect on as I have I try to kill in the coming weeks!

One of my favourite things about Sunderland University is this poster.

You can find it in every toilet across both campuses, and it always raises a smile everytime I see it. There’s something very amusing about a university that trusts its students with the future of Forensic Science, Chemistry, Broadcast Media, International Business and so on and so forth… but doesn’t trust that we can wash our hands properly.

For what it’s worth I’m now an expert at washing my hands.

An essay I handed in today, one of my final ones of my Uni career. I think its an interesting read. Sort of.

Discourses of ‘Race’ and ‘Ethnicity’ and their influences on the war on terror

“The war on terror, following on from September 11th and July 7th, has created a populist anti-Muslim, anti-asylum culture, based on the politics of fear – which in turn has led to the erosion of civil liberties and the ushering in of a new state racism.” (Kundnani, 2007:1).

In this essay I will attempt to critically examine how discourses of race and ethnicity in the media, following on from the terrorist attacks of September 11th and July 7th, have influenced the ‘war on terror’ and I will attempt to prove that the above quote, from Kundnani, is accurate in its assessment that the media have constructed an anti-Muslim ethos in Western society.

I also hope to support the notion that the mass media are a prime form of ideological production in the modern liberal democratic state (Anthias & Yuval-Davis, 1992:22) and that a declaration of a ‘war on terrorism’ from the United States government, promoted by the media, has created a cautious attitude and a “chorus of dissent” around the world (McCulloch, 2002:54). (more…)

I mentioned last week that I had submitted my dissertation project – www.worldhiphop.fm.

Today I handed in the production file.

Except its more like an encyclopedia.

I took some pictures because there’s a good chance I may never see this file again, it could very well be shipped to a museum on how production files should be put together.

300-400 pages I reckon. If it doesn’t get me a first class mark I’ll be amazed.

I feel like shit.

(see below)

It’s 3AM and I’m sat in a library in Sunderland.

Why?

My dissertation is due in tomorrow (or today in fact) and I’m desperately trying to get everything together. I can’t emphasise the word ‘desperately’ enough. And it looks like this is going to be one of those days where sleep passes me by.

I feel kind of ashamed that after 3 years I know no better, but at the same time I know I could hand this in right now if I wanted to, I’m using the extra time to make this thing picture perfect.

Last time I did an all-nighter, back in January, I got 82%, which is a sky-high first, so I’m hoping that this will follow suit. It’s one of my last assignments at uni, probably my biggest, so once I’m past this it will be all plain sailing. Downside is that it’s going to me a couple of days to get my sleeping pattern back, but I’ve got work all weekend so I’m going to be bloody knackered.

Oh, and I just saw two people revising who broke out into a full on arguement. “You don’t know a fucking thing about this” was said a fair few times and one of them has just gone outside to calm down. It was a wonderful interlude to what will be an awfully long night.

Just handed in my radio dissertation, so the end of uni is in sight.

Unlike most forms of academia, media degrees allow a great deal of flexibility in dissertation projects. I could have opted to write a lengthy 10,000 word document, but instead I decided to work on something more practical, something I could show prospective employers. So I settled on creating a web radio project, a web music station, and of course it would be hip hop music - one of my major passions.

Check it out - www.worldhiphop.fm.