Thinking ahead - work experience

You should bear in mind that you will be competing with MSc students who have a summer work experience requirement as part of their course.

If you want to find out about working in a newspaper or magazine, you can try contacting the newsdesks. But to be honest the best journalistic work experience you can get would be on Felix and/or publish yourself by keeping a blog. A woman at the Guardian was saying on their media podcast a few weeks ago that she won't look at applications from non-bloggers.

If you want office-based work, have a look at some of the organisations listed in the sidebar (such as NESTA). Find something or someone you are interested in, and email them.

The BA have a festival of science every year, and tend to ask for volunteers to work as runners for the week (working in the press office, events or with schoolchildren, you can tell them your interest). It's a great chance to network, lots of fun and they (at least used to) pay all your expenses. It's also only a week of your time at the end of the holidays - I'll pass round any information about that when it comes up.

If you are serious about working in the field, it's worth signing up to the psci-com elist. If you want to discuss any of this with me or Sarah (or get a reference) - just ask.