Hello...I'm New Here

Sophia Meola, Marketing Administrator

Hello Everyone,

I am Sophia, a newly graduated BA (Hons) Business Management student from the University of Bedfordshire itself (Bedford Campus) and newbie member of the MARC department. I graduated a few weeks ago (15th July) with a 2.1 and I couldn’t be happier. To be honest it still feels so surreal to be able to say I am a graduate and I am still in the process of deciding which routes to take after university life, whether going for a master’s degree or finding my dream job. In a nutshell I am your typical girly girl with an entrepreneurial edge. I have an obsession with rose gold and I can’t get enough of red velvet cake (yum)!

I always knew I had a passion for business and here I am today trying to pursue it. I decided to study a Business Management degree because it offered me everything I was interested in learning more about. My Dad has always been in business and has worked his way up to owning his own advertising and marketing company called ‘Big Marketing Ltd’. I guess you could say I am following in my Dad’s footsteps and I would definitely agree with you there. Growing up watching my Dad gave me my own desire to work hard and succeed in everything that I do. Amongst everything else, I also work for my Dad’s company as a ‘Digital Media Assistant’ and have worked on some incredible campaigns recently with Rolls Royce and Lotus Cars. I am such a busy bee these days haha! I bet you are all wondering why I am not working with my Dad’s company full time right?! Well, here’s the thing…as much as I would love to work with my Dad full time I think I would get too comfortable and eventually lose sight of all of the other opportunities that are out there for me. My Dad worked his way up from the bottom and I intend to do so also. 

I tend to ramble a bit so let’s move swiftly on. So, last week I started my new role at the University of Bedfordshire’s MARC department as ‘Marketing Administrator’. Some of you may know that I write the Business Students blog and I found out about the role because of my internship (yay!). Everything happened quite quickly, so here I am today being part of the MARC team until October. My role consists of assisting all areas of the MARC department from the marketing, admissions, recruitment and communications teams. I feel so proud knowing I was given this opportunity so close to graduating university and I think this is a great prospect for someone like me who has an obsession with all things marketing.

As I mentioned above I am currently writing the Business Students blog for the university, if you would like to read my most recent post you can do so my clicking here. Blogging is something that has become a huge part of my life and I couldn’t see myself not doing. I have actually been writing my own personal blog for over 2 years now and I have enjoyed every second of it. I officially started my blog during the first year at university as a creative outlet for myself, so I feel it has been something that has been with me throughout my student life journey. It is your typical girly girl blog which features beauty, fashion and lifestyle posts about everything else I love in life. If you would like to take a peek at that you can do so by clicking here...I am currently going through a blog re-design so please excuse the mess :). Last year I was extremely fortunate and lucky to have been shortlisted in the Cosmopolitan Magazine Blog Awards. It I still something I cannot believe actually happened and since being nominated last year I have been working alongside a London based PR agency and have had the opportunity to collaborate with well-known brands and attend some fabulous events that are mainly based in London. Recently I found out some even more amazing news, I was actually driving home from my MARC interview when I started receiving all of these tweets saying congratulations…I was so confused! I had forgotten that the Cosmopolitan Blog Awards 2014 shortlist was being released that day so I couldn’t think what it could have been. Eventually, after some investigating I found out I was shortlisted again this year! I never thought in my right mind that I would be here a year later talking about being nominated for a second year in a row and let alone for two awards! To be nominated with a magazine I read regularly feels like a complete dream. To be shortlisted and going to the awards is an achievement in itself; however, if I actually won it would just be the cherry on top...I don’t know what I would do! So here is where I lay out the cheesy ‘pretty please vote more me’ line! I am nominated under ‘Best Established Beauty Blog’ and ‘Best Use of Social Media’ so if you have a spare moment I would really appreciate a little vote. Thank you in advance :)

Now more of the personals are out of the way, let’s get back into talking about my new job role. At the moment I have been given the opportunity to work on numerous different tasks. The first being to update subject guides for the ‘Business, Finance and Tourism’, ‘Law’, ‘English Language and Communication’ and ‘Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations’ courses. It has been great to dive in and find all the information to give the guides a pick me up. Alongside this I have also been given the task of collating prospectus requests from potential students and issuing them prospectuses based on their specific requests. Being an alumnus it has been great to see how everything works behind the scenes. I remember when I received my prospectuses! My most recent task has been to update the photo library, this has involved me scrolling through all images available on the internal server and updating captions, tags and deleting duplicates. This is a great task to jump between everything else…especially if you get a creative mental block. Also, it helps that I am quite an organised person and love to re-organise things!

Amongst all of the above I have also had the opportunity to help out other parts of the department. I attended two graduations last week where I helped distribute leaflets about the Jubilee Scholarship and film students for some video projects. Being in my second week of my new role I think I am slowly but surely settling in more. I attended my first team meeting this week and it was great to hear about all of the projects that are going on at the moment and what is being planned for the future. So far I have really enjoyed working with the team and on the projects I have been assigned. Going straight from a university course into a full time job has been a leap but I feel I have used so many skills that I learnt across my university journey studying my degree. Being on the other side of the table it has really opened my eyes at how much works goes into every little thing…especially the prospectuses and subject guides! I am actually off away on vacation Saturday so I am really looking forward to escaping to some sunshine. Upon my return I will be working on some of the same tasks as above, also volunteering some time at a University of Bedfordshire clearing stand with some of the MARC team and helping with clearing! August is looking pretty good!

Speak to you all soon!