June – The results are in, and life starts to resume normality

June was exciting! I had an awards night and my college results to sustain the tension. Most importantly on a personal basis, we are all well and lockdowns are starting to lift. I met family recently for the first time in many months, with virtual hugs.
The National Student Media Awards was a fantastic night. Congratulations came in from many countries when we won Blog Of The Year. The judge was a professional multimedia journalist, Pete The Vet, Pete Wedderburn, and the blog had to be edited by a full-time student.

I was shortlisted for the EPA Award for Journalism Relating To The Environment. This was judged by an Irish Times journalist. While I didn’t win this or my other shortlisted classes, I’m pleased with this achievement.

The Student Awards from my own college, DBS, were mentioned previously. Now you can see the nominations and results on the blogs I run for Journalism Society and Sustainability Society.

Inside DBS
https://insidedbs.wordpress.com/2021/...
Sustainable College
https://sustainablecollege.wordpress....

The college weekly news mail picked up on these posts. I had made a fun little TV journalism video with my friends for the college awards night: see it on YouTube. My cat won the college Zoom Pet Appearance Of The Year Award, so she gets a mention.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTVwK...

DBS was runner-up in Ireland’s Education Awards for Green Campus Award, only beaten by University College Cork.

I created an environmental news website for my thesis project. The work has now been graded and I am delighted with my results. One comment in the grading feedback was that this module had clearly given the student an exceptional learning experience. Yes, it did, because of the learning challenges and fun I chose to undertake, as opposed to writing a formal thesis, which would have taken me two weeks.

I have recommended to the college that a module combining all the media should be standard in the final year of any multimedia course; there was none on this course. I could have written journalism articles, with my own photography, or created a news podcast, or produced a documentary film, or built a website with links. I combined all of these, and taught myself to create infographics and jigsaws.

I also had to write a reflective essay with standard referencing, and provide referencing for my articles, so the academic area was covered. The reflective essay was well received too; lecturers see so many of these. I can assure you that having a good standard of English writing goes a long way to getting the desired grades. But I still had to find and write up the news stories, interview the experts, take and select the photos, create the podcasts and the video production. And build them into an interactive website.

Thanks to everyone who helped me with content. Here’s the link.
https://clareobeara.wixsite.com/my-site

During my second year, I covered a college talk given by a Dublin lady who had gained a diploma in Psychology at DBS and travelled widely, before writing her memoir and becoming a motivational speaker. Tracey Ellen Maria’s achievements despite suffering from the rare condition muscular dystonia and being largely unable to speak or use her arms, since the age of eight, had often returned to my thoughts. I’ve now bought and read her memoir, Recommenced: Motivation > Limitation, and I heartily recommend this to anyone who feels they need a boost to motivation.

While restrictions are still in place, the conversations about returning to work in offices or working from home, or indeed changing job, are happening. I read a comment recently from a lady who lectures in business methods; she doesn’t expect to be back in a college campus until 2022. I know if I had nothing else to do, I would rather enrol for an online class than have nothing to show for a year. Some students had already deferred the start of studies for a year.
But many people find that online classes do not suit them, or they need equipment which is not available if the campus is closed. Perhaps the answer is to enrol in something less ambitious, and cheaper, or state funded. DBS is currently advertising a funded course in digital marketing, but since I refuse to use facebook or twitter on privacy grounds, I would not be the right person to enrol on that course.

I expect I’ll spend this year catching up on everything I was putting on hold or doing piecemeal, which in my case of course includes reading and reviewing. And writing more books.

Speaking of which I was absolutely honoured to find a review of my entire Dining Out Around The Solar System series on Amazon.

“This is an amazing quartet of tales about a couple of young men in a near-future alternate London. They come from tough backgrounds, but everybody does in this future London, where corporations rule everything. Working as feature writers for a hugely popular e-zine, they use hacking skills, kindness, and personal charm to make themselves the team to watch, befriending people from other worlds and uncovering plots and prejudices that make real differences in the lives of those they touch. This series is witty, erudite, thoughtful, and very, very funny. There are digressions into how the near-future works, and the truth is that it's a lot like what's happening in our world, with the interesting assumptions that other worlds are populated and space travel is easy. I've read the series several times now and find new things to enjoy every time.”

Thank you.

This month I am making Rodeo Finn free, 10 – 13 July; this Young Adult adventure brings pony-mad Finn from her parents’ dairy farm in Ireland to her uncle’s ranch in Arizona. Enjoy! And wishing a happy Fourth of July to those who celebrate.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00OU100W8

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OU100W8

Anyone not in the UK or US stores should click the US link and they will be brought to Amazon.com which will offer to take them to their nearest store.

All my books are in the Kindle Unlimited programme. If you enjoy a book please leave a review, which helps other readers.

Follow my published articles on Inside DBS, Medium or my JournoPortfolio page.
https://clareobeara.journoportfolio.com/

Watch my book trailers for my science fiction series:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GadPp...

Visit my website:
www.clareobeara.ie

for news, puzzles, books, reviews and events. We have created a new page for Young Adult readers. This contains plenty of horses and dogs! You can find my podcasts on the News and Events page. I provide a Writers’ Page giving tips about how to be an independent publisher. I am also adding book covers to Pinterest boards after I review the books, so feel free to find me on Pinterest.