I didn’t generally enjoy my student experience in college, a post for another time. But there was one bright spot that came in the second part of my final year, and that’s an unconventional interest in Radio thanks to Wired 99.9 FM. In the first part of this Easter Weekend’s Double Bill, I want to explain how the experience went and why I call it an unconventional bright spot in my first college experience.
Now one thing I’m interested in that some would call unconventional is reading the news. A lot of people, especially in today’s Socio-Economic Environment, would consider reading the news a complete waste of time because of how depressing most of it looks. I share that sentiment to a degree, but I overcome it by ignoring most blatant rage-bait and right-wing brain rot, as well as filtering what I read and where I read it. When I first went to college, I spotted the Student Radio station and was keen to do something there, although not entirely sure what at first. Unfortunately, I couldn’t bring myself to volunteer for the first three years because my college timetables were constantly packed with lectures and tutorials and limited windows to study in the library, which made it impossible to achieve anything there.
That is until my final year, which was split into two thanks mostly to COVID-19. I was a frequent visitor to the Student Union building which I eventually just used to have lunch, listen to music via YouTube on my phone and start drafting the first wave of posts for this site, even if I sometimes hated the noise at peak times. I then started noticing a very handsome guy who dressed very casually walking in and out of the studio, which my eyes were drawn to every time he passed me by. That turned out to be Daragh, who, one Wednesday in January 2022, approached me and said the station was looking for volunteers and asked if I would be interested. And I said yes because I’d always wanted to do it, plus the fact it was my final few months, and I wanted to do something that would finish my time in college on a high note.
I showed him the outline of this Blog and he said it was a really great idea. Then one month later, he came back to me again to follow up on my initial interest. I said I was keen on doing something in Current Affairs such as reading the news or something and he put me on the spot by asking if I was prepared to record a brief news bulletin for that afternoon’s edition of Wired In. It literally was on the spot, but I said sure, why not? My first bulletin was three national and three international news stories that caught my eye and a lead into the Sports News being read by someone else. I recorded it all in about 15 minutes and still made it to my lecture that afternoon on time. And that’s how it started!
The ADog Blog 