Today is my last day in the office – it’s come around quickly!
Since my last update I’ve been working on the National Student Careers Survey
which is now running, and I’ve set up meetings with both the University of Brighton and Brighton and Hove City College to meet with people from their Careers Services to find out more about what schools, colleges and Universities are offering students and the challenges they face.
I’ve also been looking to develop our University resources to see what kind of data, information and features we could add to what we have already to make TSR a one stop shop for people applying to uni.
Although I’m not heavily involved in the 3.8 update directly, we had a meeting yesterday to discuss and familiarise ourselves with the new functionality and the mod tools that will be coming with said functionality, and I’m getting quite excited now for the update. It feels like it’s taken forever but we don’t have too long to wait now!
The office is a hive of activity at the moment. We’re currently advertising and interviewing for 3 positions which means the office is quite busy and there’s a fair bit of chatter about the candidates and the progress of the recruitment process. I’m looking forward to seeing who will end up joining the team – the company seems so big now, given that when I was last here 2 years ago there were only 4 employees and now there are 9, soon to be 11 (one leaving, 3 new!)
I think that’s it for now so I shall sign off and see you around the forums when I return as a supermod!
As July draws to a close, my focus is turning to the upcoming Clearing Period. This involves coordinating an update of our Clearing Contacts Directory, ensuring all the information we have on our site is up to date and correct, seeking out more personal experiences of Clearing and organising our Clearing advisers for this year.
This year’s results and Clearing period is also going to be a bit different. Because of the current economic situation, Univerisities’ budgets have been cut which means there will be less places in Clearing and they will have to be much stricter with ensuring they don’t go over their quota of people for each course. As a result it seems many students may end up without a place at University this year, which is a bit of a grim prospect. Because of this, we’re drawing together as much information as we can about the options available to people who don’t get into uni this year so we can provide some advice and guidance to anyone who finds themselves in this situation.
We’ll be getting up something more substantial over the next few weeks but for now we’re created a wiki page for members to start to share suggestions with each other – Not going to uni wiki page
Along similar lines, we’re starting to look at the Careers section to see how we can develop and improve what we have to offer. We’re going to be running a site survey soon (keep an eye out for it!) and hopefully speaking to local schools, colleges and Universities to find out what Careers services they currently offer students, and what we can offer to compliment this and fill in gaps where support and information is lacking.
Other tasks on my plate include updating and reworking the FAQ ready for the 3.8 update, which will include a redraft of the Rules and more information about Moderation on the site. We’re also looking at what we can do to better promote the benefits of subscribing to TSR as currently it’s a bit of a mystery to many and there’s only one page on TSR telling you about subscriptions which is tucked away.
Do you think the name ‘subscription’ is clear enough?
The last couple of days have been quite interesting as we had 3 electricians in all morning yesterday making a racket while fixing the fire alarm and generally being quite distracting, then once they’d left the alarm went off for ages and we almost had to stop work as it was so loud! Eventually the landlord came and turned it off and peace was regained. During all of this we had the first interviewee for the developer position turn up. I wasn’t sitting in on the interviews but I could see through the glass panels so made sure to have a good old nose at the candidates 
Sadly our other intern (Michael) finished on Friday which means I am on my own now. He worked really hard so I just want to say thank you on behalf of everyone to Michael for all his efforts.
That’s it for now, until next time!
Hello, dear readers.
You might have seen the recent blog article CJ put up about another intern opportunity here at Internet HQ. I have to admit, I didn’t. What I did see though was the announcement put up on thestudentroom, and as I was having no real luck applying for jobs in Manchester, where I’m at uni, I decided to apply. Soon after that I got an email from Pete and found myself having an interview with him and Warren. Only three days later I was offered the job and by Monday I was moving to Brighton.
I’d better introduce myself a little more personally too. I’m Michael – Jangrafess on the forums – I’m twenty, and I’ve just finished my second year of university where I study a degree in philosophy. I’m pretty terrible at introducing or describing myself but I’ll have a go at saying more anyway… I grew up in West London and went to too many schools, never really knowing where my life was headed but eventually doing an A Level in philosophy almost by accident, and deciding that that was what I wanted to do in higher education. I wandered around the country for a bit trying to figure out where I wanted to go to uni and eventually spent a day in Manchester almost without meaning to and completely fell in love with the city. It’s got everything I want – a small centre, but still large as a whole, a great student district, good travel links (only 2 hours to London!) and generally made me feel immediately at home. So all I had to do was not fail my A Levels horrifically as I chose Manchester Metropolitan over Manchester and I was in.
Apart from philosophy, I have interests in travelling, football (the love of my life being Brentford FC, but I watch Manchester City as much as I can as well), music and general young person stuff. Urm, I’m trying to think of something I’m into that isn’t pretty average and bog standard for a twenty year old. It’s really not going well so I’ve decided to scroll through some of the fanpages I have on facebook to figure out what I like and I’ve come up with ‘Nazi teletubbies,’ ‘Oversized Smoking Pipes’ and ‘Extreme backgammon’. They’ll do!
Anyway, back to the internship. My first day here was mainly spent on trains. First up I was diverted to Leeds, then the train to London was horrendously slow. Someone also started a fire of some sort on the tube train from King’s Cross to Victoria. It’s almost as if someone up there didn’t want me to do this job… but I ignored that and arrived in the office to friendly smiling faces, which took me out to watch the football and have a pint. Pretty good deal.
I’m in my fourth week here now and I’m heavily involved in the site upgrade to new forum software. Generally speaking my tasks include liaising with the memberbase of the forum and testing what’s going wrong on the development site. I’ve also had to spend an incredibly tough day playing flash games. I really really hope they don’t make me do that again.
I’ll update you all with more information on what I actually do here later on this week! For now this is getting fairly long so I’ll leave it as a brief hello and get on with watching New Zealand vs Slovakia making sure that all the widget settings on TSR are correct.
Michael
Tally ho! Friday January 29th was my last week as TSR intern.
It’s certainly been an interesting week. Today I’ve been working on a few final things on the TSR wiki, tidying up this-that-and-the-other, and making sure all my loose ends are collected together. Earlier in the week, I’ve been happily typing away at a few things – some analytical, press release style things looking at the results from a couple of recent TSR surveys, and writing some helpful guides that may soon be appearing on coursework.info. I’ve also been looking at some interesting TSR related statistics – general trends in page views, posting levels and that sort of thing. I can’t say it makes much sense to me, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
Outside of the office, we had a little midweek shindig on Wednesday, a joint-celebration style event, marking the recent birthday of site admin (and general good guy) CJ, and marking my imminent departure from the office, Brighton, and most probably, general site activity. For, if you didn’t know, I still live in the dark ages at home, and my continuous lack of internet shall plague me longer than the horrific antics of the drunken staff. (It’s ok, they don’t really get drunk, they’re sensible…)
I’ve enjoyed my time here, and I am certainly sad to be leaving. But as with all most things like this – university, holidays – I’m quite happy to be heading back home – where food will be made for me, clothes will be laundered for me, and I can sleep in my own bed. And what is next for me? Well, for the next two weeks I will be rubbing shoulders with the city slickers in London, where I have two weeks work experience scheduled with The Guardian newspaper. Smugness mode enabled. I’m a little bit nervous about this, I must say; but I’m sure the experience will be great.
So, for the last time I sign off from the TSR office. Who knows if I’ll ever be back here again. Will life (on the forum) be the same for me? Watch this space.
JR
Another week, another blog, because I’m free, and no one else is. Basically. Little Henry the ball is still outside, and probably freezing his proverbial gonads off in Brighton’s winter weather. That’s right, we’re nearly at Christmas and our weather is cold and almost perpetually raining. What else would we expect? Actually, today had been pretty dry, surprisingly, so it’ll probably rain when I am walking home from work or something. Not that I want to tempt fate or anything.
So what’s NEW I hear you cry? Well, today I’ve been looking over the post formatting of the TSR awards, which I am sure everyone will be glad to hear, should be up and running pretty soon. Whilst half of last year’s successful people are now gone (who the hell was WOLLSMOTH and how did he ever come 3rd in most famous? Who even still remembers him? These questions will abound if you look at last year’s winners) some are still around and likely to be fighting it out for those awards again. Obviously I don’t mean actively fighting, that would be absurd.
Since my first main task of completing the Further Education page that I linked last week (actually it may have been the week before) I’ve been working on a couple more pages. First, I’ve been helping with the finishing touches to a newly designed careers hub, which is well on its way and should make it nice and easy for people to search jobs through TSR. Imagine that. Job searching without even having to stop procrastinating? If only TSR had an essay and revision bank you could even study while procrastinating. Oh wait, it already does…
The second thing I’ve been working on is a set of resources for students in university who are considering ‘dropping out’, which when it’s finished should be a really great resource – since the majority of the General University Discussion forum has confirmed that there is very little help for those considering dropping out.
It’s December now, and pretty scary to think that another year is almost through – thinking back to where I was this time last year is a pretty interesting thing. Dissertation on the horizon, graduation still seeming far away on the horizon… Who knows where I’ll be this time next year? Maybe I’ll break into the staff blog to give you my update, or maybe (probably) I’ll still be floating around on TSR being all immature and stuff. Most likely the latter.
But, what does December bring every year? That’s right, Christmas! And things are heating up round here, while the world outside gets colder, as we’ve lots of exciting Christmas parties and things to have while you all do your mock exams, revise for real exams or work on essays when you’d rather be feasting on all that glorious turkey.
Elsewhere in the office the others are typing furiously to meet their deadlines, so thank god there should be a couple of new arrivals in the new year to relieve the work load. I’m sure you’ll hear more about that from Chris or Jamie when the time comes.
Whilst I feel typing away like this is a wonderful use of my time, I better stop rambling. Not very time efficient, and that’s bad for business. Until next time, stoke me a kipper.
Good day! I now have my own account to write things up from, so here’s my first official blog.
I’ve been down in Brighton for a little over a month now, and while I’m still very much enjoying the chatter in the office (if not the choice of radio…), the recent weather changes have not been welcomed. Lots of rain and lots of wind. I got absolutely drenched on my way to work on Monday and everyone laughed at me; so I carry a towel in my bag now.
Alas. I’m sure you’re all dying to hear what I’ve been up to recently. Well, I’ve spent a lot of time working with the wiki, mostly on one of two tasks. The first is the now completed ‘Further Education’ hub, which can be seen here http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/wiki/A_Guide_to_Further_Education . That’s right, I coded that whole page myself, html and all. Pretty impressive, right? In addition to that, I spent a fair bit of time writing up a lot of those new articles, and getting in touch with third parties to provide us with some other useful information.
The other thing I have been working on is the university resources; mostly the University Guides, which you may have seen the odd thread about in one or two university forums. We’re currently testing the new look page mock up and hoping that people will give us some feedback, but most people seem reluctant. This is still very much in the development stage, but I’ve seen some screen shots of what it’ll all look like, and well, it’s going to be good when we get it implemented. I’ve been promised the chance to learn some more about the business side of things over the next few weeks, which sounds really good. There are so many interesting facts and figures to do with TSR that I’m sure most people would be pretty surprised to hear.
I can’t really say much about what the other dudes are working on, since they all do stuff that’s far more important than what I do, but they’re all working really hard on their respective development and advertising tasks and what have you. This sounds quite a lot like propaganda, and tbh it is; but I’m being paid, so I don’t mind too much :$
In other (similarly FASCINATING) office news, there’s another intern in the office right now, and no one knows who. Isn’t that exciting! </insert ‘teehee’ smiley here.>
I think that’s all I have to say. Keep it real, TSR fans.
