Compare and contrast, would you? Earlier this year I worked at a media careers fair where certain schools had pulled out and refused to allow their students to attend. It wasn\u2019t any complaint against the fair, it was something to do with the cost of getting them there and the staff time it was going to take up. Whatever. The key thing is that a handful of those students came anyway.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know if they lied to their teachers, I don\u2019t know if they pulled a sickie, I just know that effectively they said screw the school, we need this. And they did something about what they needed.<\/p>\n
No question: you know they\u2019ll go far and you would hire them on the spot.<\/p>\n
Then last night I was talking with some university writing students and they were great: I mean, they were funny and cheery and they\u2019d come some distance to attend a Royal Television Society<\/a> event. But they also told me about a problem they\u2019d had which is that they\u2019d been assigned to write substantial projects in groups and some of the other writers didn\u2019t always show up.<\/p>\n Now, they were adamant that some of those writers had really good reasons to be absent but these were their friends they were talking about and they were nice about them. <\/p>\n I\u2019m not.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t show up, you don\u2019t matter. <\/p>\n I\u2019ve always believed that the show comes first. All that\u2019s changed as I\u2019ve got older is that I\u2019m more careful which show I pick. Once you\u2019ve agreed to do it, though, you\u2019re doing it. That seems so obvious to me when in my case I\u2019m being paid but these absent students have spent a lot of money to study at university so if money were the only factor, you\u2019d expect them to be making the most of their investment.<\/p>\n Apparently the university knows as well as you do that some writers are going to let their colleagues down and actually that\u2019s part of the teachable moment. And as one of the two I talked with described what she\u2019d had to do, I did realise that she\u2019d just learned a little about becoming a producer.<\/p>\n That\u2019s great for her but it happened because she showed up. <\/p>\n I have no idea whether her writing is any good or not. But you do know that it\u2019s better than the writing these absent writers failed to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Compare and contrast, would you? Earlier this year I worked at a media careers fair where certain schools had pulled … Continue reading