My student media career was relatively long. I started as a very keen first year writer for Forge Press and became news editor for my second year which kept me busy most hours of the day and pretty much killed any social life I had before. I would spend weeks tirelessly looking for stories, rewriting unsatisfactory articles and fiddling with the design.

The experience was definitely a good one – I know more about InDesign and news writing than a lot of people in my journalism course. I picked up remarkable interviewing skills from dodgy stories I covered, learned how to deal with tight deadlines and got a fair share of bylines that were a pleasant show to my grandmother.

But last September I tired of Forge Press. I don’t exactly know why I quit my news editor position right there and then, it might have been some personal problems I was having, but it was the right choice. Student media was holding me back, it wasn’t letting me be creative and I had forgotten why I loved telling stories and putting them into words.

I also wasn’t sure if people were listening to me. After I was free from my position, I started really considering if people even read the stories I’d worked so hard to achieve and whether people who weren’t in student media even cared about what happens in the university. I only ever got compliments on my writing if the story was slightly funny; once I got commended for an article entitled ‘Plop Tarts’ about a student who ‘pooped’ in the Students’ Union after a night out. It’s always wonderful to hear people read what you wrote – but this could never go into my portfolio, it would never be taken seriously by any employer. I should be clear at this point that I don’t have a problem with Forge Press and this is not a personal attack – the points I am making are directed at student media in general.

What really made me realize that student media had only been a phase for me and not a passion, was my journalism course. I started learning about feature writing, New Journalism, Meyer Berger and Alice Munro. Inspiration came rushing back and I started reading the New Yorker, the Spectator and many other magazines that tell stories that caught your imagination and made you laugh or cry. It made me realize that this is what I wanted to do; I didn’t want to live in a student bubble, I wanted to get out of it and discover stories people would care about.

When being interviewed by the Daily Mail a couple of months ago, my Forge Press cuttings were the ones that were skimmed, whilst the bylines I got in local papers were the ones they actually read and asked me questions about. I didn’t get a place on the Mail graduate scheme, but their advice to me made sense with what I had already decided; get more local paper bylines.

A real issue with student media is that everyone can contribute. You would think that this is a good thing, but the fact that your work doesn’t go through a more experienced writer or editor before it is published makes your byline less worthy of attention.

Forge Press taught me a lot and I am hardly saying that people should stop writing for student media because in truth I learned a lot there and made many friends. But the knowledge you grasp is certainly exhaustible and in the end I just resented having to do student media work over my university work. It was good practice, but it is not the real world, and it will never be a real newsroom.

Can you get too caught up in student media work? Should aspiring journalists prioritise other work while at university? Or is it good to dedicate a lot of time to your student paper? Comment or @wannabehacks on Twitter

—

Nicole Froio is former deputy editor and news editor of Forge Press, a contributor to Independent Blogs and a journalism student at the University of Sheffield. She is currently doing freelance work for the Press Association and the Sheffield Star, whilst hunting for a permanent job so she can stay in the UK. You can follow her on twitter at @nicki_