9 Weeks & 4 Days (but who's counting)

Sophia Meola, Marketing Administrator

Hello there everyone!

It has been a whole 9 weeks and 4 days (but who’s counting) since I started my position here at the MARC department and it is still as great as ever. If you read my first post then you would have got a little background about me, what I like and what my aspirations are. I am happy to be back and writing a second post for this blog and no doubts I will ramble on again like last time. Since we spoke last I have had quite a lot going on in terms of work around the MARC department. I am attending regular team and departmental meetings, working hard on my tasks, getting involved in new campaigns and just generally settling more into the department.

What am I currently working on? Well, in my last post I mentioned I was given the opportunity to work on a numerous of different tasks. One of which is still updating a handful of subject guides for the new academic year and students arriving end of September beginning of October (not long now). These are still being worked on, altered and re-designed; however, they should be completed considerably soon. The road has been a little bumpy with some specific subject guides but who doesn’t like a bit of a challenge right?! I can almost see the finish line and the official DEADLINE for that matter so I really need to push to get these completed. I am on leave from Wednesday 24th and return Monday 29th so ideally I need to get them completed before my leave…fingers crossed!

The photo library! I have been working on the online photo library for a few weeks now and it is slowly but surely coming together nicely. This task has involved me scrolling though all images available on the internal server and updating captions, tags and deleting duplicates. This has been a great task to work on and jump in to between everything else I am working on at the moment. I consider myself quite an organised individual so I have really enjoyed re-organising it all (I am such a dork).

On the theme of pictures I was actually asked to contribute and take part in the new 2014 winter campaign. This involved me attending a nifty photoshoot and answering a few questions in a video. I am extremely excited to see the final results and everything should be going live Monday 22nd of this month so keep your eyes peeled. I have refused to watch my video takes back as yet as I don’t know what to expect…did I say the right thing? Did I miss anything out? Does my hair and makeup look decent? – Such a girly thing for me to say haha. The thing is I want to start making videos to progress my personal blog and start the whole Youtube vlogging thing so ideally I really need to get it down to a T. I mean, otherwise it might be a tad tricky editing a video and uploading them. Ohh nothing is ever easy with me.

Now for a task that I have completed! A few weeks ago I was told to copy over the 2015 Undergraduate and 2015 Postgraduate prospectuses into single file documents onto the W drive. Just like the above suggests I went through a copied and pasted each page throughout the prospectus into word documents and then re-formatted the layout ready for when we start work on the new 2016 ones! I found it very therapeutic and also very interesting as I got to obtain a full understanding of all of the subjects we offer here at the university.

A few weeks ago now I completed my Business Student blogging internship with the university. It was such a great experience to get involved in and I love how it developed into an online diary format documenting my final year at the university. It is something I can always look back on in the future and reminisce. This was actually the first year introducing the student blogs and I think there is talk in the works that they will be carrying on…yay! During a team meeting on Monday I was told that the team wanted me to help recruit and train the new student bloggers. This really excited me because blogging is a huge part of my life and being able to incorporate that into a job role seems like perfection to me. Blogging has become a huge part of my life and it is such a glorious tool that can be used throughout so many different marketing platforms…the possibilities are endless.

On the theme of Monday’s team meeting, I was told that the MARC department wanted to elongate my contract a keep me on board a little longer than initially planned. For a Business management graduate who only graduated two months ago this is a great opportunity for me. Hopefully I will be able to stay the duration the team want me, however, I did make a few plans and commitments prior to finding out about the new contract as I obviously thought my last day would be 3rd October…fingers crossed we can work everything out.

What would be a Sophia blog post without something a little personal?! In my last post I mentioned that my blog was nominated under two categories in the 2014 Cosmopolitan Blog Awards. Since writing that post the voting has now closed and we find out results during an awards ceremony on 7th October in London. I am extremely excited to head down, meet up with some blogging friends and also meet a whole load of new bloggers. I am a little nervous and anxious about it all but just to be going to the awards for me is an achievement in itself so we will see what else the night might bring. I am planning on bringing my nifty Canon 700D with me so I may or may not write a little post about it all to update you guys on here or on my student blog…eeeep! P.S my blog has had it's little makeover now so if you fancy a little peek you can do so by clicking here. 

Overall, it has been a great 9 weeks and I am looking forward to starting work on some new projects...one of which will be the new 2016 prospectuses! Rightio, I think that is everything that is going on at the moment. I hope you enjoyed reading my rambles once again. If you have made is this far then well done, you deserve a gold star!

Speak to you all soon!