I can't stand the Sunderland Echo, I live in Sunderland but prefer to read a Newcastle based paper. So why would I want to spend £3000 a year writing news stories for the Sunderland Echo?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

I could name endless amounts of things I would prefer to be doing that writing a story about a cat stuck in a tree or a man who has just won slimmer of the year.

Magazine journalism is what I chose to do but its taken a year and half of writing taglines for the Sunderland Echo and stories that must be between 275 and 325 words before we even picked up a copy of heat or Good Housekeeping, which is like my bible.

I have no doubts that the 1st year of my course was a learning experience and learning the foundations and fundamentals of being a journalist set me on my way. But frankly it was boring!

Initially I started off doing Joint Honours Journalism with Computing, which was the biggest regret. I remember walking into a room during Freshers week with Kevin Overbury and him telling us "welcome to joint honours journalism. The idea of this course is to give you an incite to journalism and how it all works...Oh by the way this degree does not give you the qualifications to become a journalist."