metro

And for the first time in ages, I think I might actually be... brace yourself.. HAPPY! Wow!

It's great to feel useful again. After my frightening first night at the tabloid, things eased right into place, and now I'm an old hand at it. Well, not exactly... but I'm feeling a lot more confident and comfortable there. And they asked me back for four more shifts! So yeah! I can't be doing THAT badly.

And on my second night I got a phone call from another newspaper, one of several I had written off to for a job. They were actually phoning to arrange an interview! Woo hoo!

I was very excited, as this would be very close to my ideal job right now. It's a trainee position, which generally means shit wages but great experience. The perfect way to get my foot on the ladder of this new profession of mine, which is rather difficult to get into full time. Subs work for years doing freelance shifts before landing a full time job... here's my chance to get one immediately! Woo hoo! Plus, I figure I'm a good candidate because I have some limited subbing experience, and lots of broad journalism experience... so I'm clued in, yet still ripe for moulding.

The interview was yesterday. It was a bit intense. The interview itself was fine. Very informal, pretty light stuff actually. Really short and basic. Almost worringly so. Hmmm. But then came the practical test. The night editor - a really nice lady from Richard's part of the world - led me to the computers in the back and handed me a print-out page from last week's paper. She had altered it, planting a few mistakes and legally dubious statements, and challenged me to find them all. Cool. What I do best! So I set to work on that, and found all the errors. Woo hoo!

Then she sat me down at her computer, which had a full page of four stories to be subbed. Ack! Four stories! That's a LOT. That's like an entire six-hour shift worth at the tabloid! And she expected me to do it all, then and there, with her sitting next to me, watching over my shoulder the entire time. Talk about pressure! It was awful! And even worse, I muddled things up immediately and had to ask for her help. Not the best start.

But I ploughed on. Got the stories to fit, remembered to spell check them all, rewrote quite a few bits, even came up with suitable headlines. In fact, two of my headlines were almost exactly what she had come up with when she subbed the same stories, for publication just the other day. And the other two, she thought they were even better than what she came up with! Ha! After that, she made me fit in another story, drawing text boxes and colour-coded headers, importing photos... stuff I haven't done in years! Eeps!

I thought the whole exercise was proving just how little I knew about Quark, but afterwards she said she was dead impressed with how much I knew, that I was so much more advanced than most other people asked to do the exercise, so much so that she went back to re-read my CV. Ha! Go figure!

So that all sounds very positive, doesn't it? Oh yeah! She asked if I had any questions, and I had loads, considering she never even covered the basics, like work hours - 3pm to 10pm, Sunday through Thursday - and salary - more than I was making up north! And that was a GOOD salary! Shit! She told me she still had five people to interview, and that she would draw up a short list of four for the next round of interviews, with the editor in chief. When I asked for a time frame, she broke down and said I could be pretty much guarenteed a second interview and asked if the week after next would be okay for me. Woo hoo! Yay! I'm so in!

It's all very exciting! It seems such a great job, an amazing salary... and did I mention its location? In a nice building right downtown, within walking distance! So fingers crossed, all of you! I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high, but I can't help getting a little excited about the prospect. And the money. Damn.

In the meantime, I have another shift at the tabloid on Friday. And I've been busying myself with other tasks. So overall, it's been a good two weeks. Even the dripping kitchen ceiling and lack of hot water has stopped phasing me. Besides, if I land that job, imagine the flat we could get... oooooh!