If you’re interested in having your own column in our features section, much like the one below, please pitch your column idea, a little bit about yourself, and any previous writing examples you have to Tommaso at features@strathclydetelegraph.com
Now that university is about to start, is time for that summer’s-over bittersweet feeling to give way to excitement. Excitement?! For uni?! YES!
If you are about to begin your first year, you are going to embark on an adventurous journey, during which you will meet friends for life (well, hopefully), maybe your wife – at least this is what I heard on my induction day. Fake, get on Tinder – and certainly several challenges and fantastic moments that will make you grow up to become a different person than the one you are now. If you moved to Glasgow without knowing anyone, this is your chance to reinvent yourself and break out of your comfort zone trying things you would have never dreamed of before.
If you are staying at Strathclyde for just one year, or as little as an exchange/Erasmus semester, well then, you’re in the best position of us all! The university is going to lull and spoil you to maintain a good relationship with your home institution, students are going to be extremely interested in everything you have to say about where you come from and how your life is so different from ours, and you’ll be represented by one of the best uni newspapers in Scotland!
If you are coming back for anything that is not your first year, you already know the drill and are looking forward to discovering new things in Glasgow and beyond. Still, there’s lots you can do to keep evolving, like start to read the Telegraph. Or why not, write for us!
In fact, this space won’t be mine all year long. Actually, it’s not mine even now – this column is yours! I’m just borrowing it for this first edition, but applications to be our second columnist are open. Now!
Here, you’ll be able to talk about whatever you want, with some limits of course, but you will have the chance to hold a fixed column on your university’s newspaper. Besides having to write a column for every print edition you’ll also be able to write for the online version as often as you want – do it for the likes, you know.
Of course, this is something that you can put in your CV, but if you are the kind of person who only does things to enrich their CV then you should find other priorities.
However, if you are keen to make your voice heard, are enthusiastic about commenting all that weird stuff that goes on in the world and want to see your name in print, then send me a sample of your writing by the ***Sunday, 1st October by 4pm***. Please include also an outline of how you would like to shape your column and ideas of what you want to discuss throughout the year.
You can contact me on Facebook or send me an email, which you can find on our website and Facebook page as well. Then, I’ll get in touch with all of you and finally decide on one person who will be the columnist for the entire year.
There’s much to be excited about for this academic year. It might be the last academic year that UK universities are in the EU, and who wasn’t looking forward to that? Also, it will be the first one entirely under a Trump’s presidency, and might even see a nuclear war exploding one day or the other. That’s all exciting stuff to write about, if you like. More importantly, we will see Taylor Swift and the Arctic Monkeys releasing new albums, and that will give us some relief from the woes of our times. We might even get a new Prime Minister in the UK, who knows.
As you can see, I am winging this whole column thing pretty badly, so please do me a favour and tell me to go away. Come forward with your own ideas for a column, and next month there will be your name here.
Just a last remark, be kind to the people around you. What you’ll get from Strathclyde depends on what you put into it, so don’t waste your money on Nourish meals but invest them into pints with strangers, and smiles to friends.
