Advice for Students

Hello. If you’re reading this, you might have asked me on social media for advice on how to get into the creative industries.

First of all: I’m sorry! The world is in an odd place right now and it sucks that you’re in the dawn of something as a lot of things seem to be in their twilight.

Next: Well done for asking for help! I was never particularly good at it, and by taking the initiative and asking for tips, you’ve already shown more drive and presence of mind than I did for much of my twenties.

Also: Another apology! I’ve been getting these requests semi-frequently and am using this space to give a general framework of help. If you still have specific questions, you can still ask me questions in a bit, but please read this entire piece first.

Finally: Many people ask me how I started my career, hoping to follow a similar route. I graduated more than 10 years ago now and the media landscape and is very different now than was then. Most of my writing before 2016 doesn’t exist anymore because many websites have since gone kaput. Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter has decimated its value for people trying to use it as a shop window. If you’re the type of person to make “detailed threads”, make sure what you write there is backed up on a blog, as Twitter (I’m not calling it X, behave yourself) is quickly decaying. If you are not getting paid for your work, do not recommend putting the majority of your creative work on a website that could get switched off overnight without you knowing.

If you’re still interested in how I got started, a podcast episode of “The Shirtless Plantain Show” I did during the first lockdown is available. However, I wouldn’t say my path into “the business” is repeatable today. You can find a link here.

What follows are my answers to a number of questions I was asked ahead of a talk I gave at Bath Spa University for soon-to-be graduates. I hope it’s useful!

How important was it to you to have a strong social media presence in finding your role at The Athletic and the companies before that?

Strong is perhaps the wrong word, but it is important to have a consistent output from your online presence. Having a lot of followers can help a bit but if you don’t have a contact email address, or a working website where people can contact you then it doesn’t mean diddly squat. It helps to have Twitter (a lot less now Elon took a hammer to its usefulness), but make social media work for you, engage with people you like and would like to work for, be respectful to them, and ask questions. Have a website, or a blog, or something where people can see what you’re doing recently. AND DO THINGS RECENTLY. If you message an editor saying you’re a writer and your blog hasn’t been updated in 10 months, they won’t take you seriously. While unemployed and looking for freelance work, I set up this Medium page and attempted to write 1000 words every Monday. It kept my writing pen sharp, and ensured there was something worth keeping me on social media for. Aim to be useful or memorable rather than a loud voice on Twitter/Youtube/TikTok.

How important was it to have a body of work experience/internships?

I haven’t done an internship since 2015, so I hope unpaid internships no longer exist.

That said: TRY TO AVOID UNPAID INTERNSHIPS AT ALL COSTS. The only person you should ever work for free is yourself. Putting yourself into debt trying to get started in a creative endeavour you can get momentum with from your own home is tricky. Making a name for yourself in “offices” (when they used to exist) is important, but you can also circumvent that process by being active on social media/having a good personal website and doing the legwork yourself. If anyone tries to pay you in exposure, tell them “People have died of exposure”.

There are a lot of books, paintings and films about being a struggling/starving artist. But creating is hard enough as it is. Don’t enter situations where you’re not getting paid and have to worry about rent on top of what to you want to do next.

What's the most important piece of advice you would offer students who are completing their degrees in the next 12 months?

I’m sorry to any students graduating at the moment. When I graduated, the world was recovering from a recession, the media was completely at a loss as to how to make money and job opportunities were scant. More than a decade later… the world is largely in the same place, only there has now been a global pandemic, which had a noticeable impact on media company finances and what sort of soft skills are important in and around the office.

Here’s some practical advice:

1. Get good at spreadsheets. Seriously. I don’t care what job you are aiming for. Get good at spreadsheets. Being organised and consistent in your work >>> being an erratic genius
2. Set up a space where you work for yourself. This could be a Medium blog, your own website, just have something that is YOURS and exists for you. Have a corner of the internet where people can go to see your work. Populate it with a consistent schedule. Could be weekly, could be monthly, could be every other month. Just have something you can send to people when they go “What have you been doing lately?”
3. Don’t be a dickhead. You’d be surprised how many people will be consistently annoying/disrespectful/abusive on public social media platforms and then privately message asking for tips. Be on-level with your criticisms if you have them, but remember people make the art you consume. Stop trying to neg people you like, professionally and personally.
4. Don’t call yourself a “content creator”. It’s not content, listen to Martin Scorsese on that one. “Content” is a boring catch-all term spun out of big tech and finance departments that seek to hitch e-commerce onto your imaginative efforts and turn everything into a flavourless, incurious advertorial that only asks easy questions. Be precise in what you call yourself. If you’re a presenter, call yourself that. A writer, call yourself that. You make art and tell stories. And if you don’t think you’re doing that right now, get back to the drawing board and increase the levels until you can comfortably describe yourself as doing that.
5. Don’t describe as “aspiring” . All you’re telling the world is you don’t yet believe in yourself to do it. Stop aspiring and do the damn thing. The moment you get paid for it once you’re a professional. And then you have to act like one. Professionalism is doing the parts of your hobby/interest that you hate doing. It’s the warm up before you play the sport, the washing your hands before you get to eat dinner. The important stuff so you don’t get sick or hurt yourself.
6. DO NOT MISS A DEADLINE. My lecturer in 2nd year and more or less saved my degree. She once told me a story of when she worked in newspapers and an editor told her the work she had created was very good because “It was the right length and on time”. The early parts of your career will be marked by how good you are at problem-solving. If you are creating problems, you are creating a stink.
7. Back yourself. If you’re the sort of person already listening to talks like this, you’re well ahead of where I was when I was at University spending more time barhopping and playing FIFA. Know what you want to do, know who you are and how you like to work, and then go out there and make the things to match. Make plans and then carry them out. Every time you talk about writing that book/making that film, without sitting down and doing it, an angel loses its wings. Do the work.
8. Take breaks. This is a rotten job market in a rotten time to be alive, stress and burnout are real and I’m typing to you after needing to take a week off after working 45 days more-or-less non stop. Take walks. Without wearing headphones. Take in what you see, what you hear, what you smell. Remember that you have value outside what you produce. And read. Constantly. Everything to hand. Things you like. Things you don’t like (always try and get 50 pages done of books you hate). Things you agree with politically. Things you don’t. Break down the reasons for those things. Read books. Newspapers. Blogs. The back of the tin of food you are buying. Magazines. If you like the thing you read, try to reach out the person who wrote it and tell them you enjoyed it. If you didn’t, have the grace to not slam into said person on social media and tell them you think they are rubbish, but instead look at ways you can constructively explain why it didnt’t work for you. Give more than you get, produce more than you take. Ride a lightning bolt, tame a snake, choke fear out with your bare hands, jump into a pile of leaves, eat an entire sheet cake. Be safe out there. Be funny. Be amazing. Make sure you follow through. Don’t be a dickhead. DO NOT BE A DICKHEAD. DO NOT MISS A DEADLINE.
9. Be the best version of you that you can be.