What I've been up to since leaving Wynberg...

I finished at Wynberg Girl’s High in 1996 and went straight on to UCT. My plan had been to study drama, but I told the selection panel that I ultimately wanted to be a playwright, not an actor, so they told me to apply again after trying out a year of my BA degree. In that year I joined the campus radio station and newspaper.

Varsity newspaper and UCT radio became more and more important in my life, while my acting aspirations faded. I dropped drama and slotted myself into the media stream in English. I wasn’t voted onto the newspaper collective at the end of first year, but persevered as part of the reporting team. Collective members started giving in to the pressure and I became sports editor (hey, you’ve got to grab every opportunity!) and then news editor.

I was voted in as arts editor in third year. By that stage my writing skills were quite good and I wrote my first feature article for Student Life magazine. In English I took a web writing course, learning basic HTML skills and web site design. I asked a visiting speaker a cheeky question in class and he offered me a job at tinderbox interactive, a multi-media design and strategy company. I worked there part-time, but although I liked the medium I didn’t enjoy writing on internet strategy.

Then in October 1999 I saw an advert in the Mail and Guardian for a position on the newspaper’s arts site, ZA@Play. I had gone to a recruitment agent earlier in the year and I’d told her that it was my dream to work on the M&G. She’d pulled a face, implying that there was little chance of that coming true. But the advert described me exactly. I applied and got the job, which was to provide entertainment listings and reviews for the newspaper and web, and to edit online. I had already been working two weeks when I graduated with a BA in English (with distinction) and History. So don’t let anyone tell you that a BA is Bugger All! Take the opportunities offered to you, and make opportunities that are not – you’ll get to where you want to be.