Know what you want, don't be afraid of rejection and be nice to people

Yixiang talking to MAJI students

"Know what you want, don't be afraid of rejection and be nice to people".

It's an aphorism that sounds like a humanist religion. For Yixiang its come to define how she's made her journey from determined MA student to a confident professional in the space of two years.

The former Westminster University student cuts a diminutive and slightly nervous figure delivering an impromptu testimonial of her life to this year's cohorts.

And the journalists-in-waiting kept her on point fielding a number of questions: what modules did you do? When did you learn financial journalism? Why did you do an NCJT course again?

If she could, she would have preferred to be seated listening to some other speaker than being the centre of attention herself - a touch of the imposter syndrome. Humility is one of her other endearing qualities remembered by the journalism lecturing team.

But such is her story, how a shy Chinese student fought to find work from one British media establishment to another: the BBC, The Financial Mail, Euro Money, that her story begs to be told. "I got a lot of rejections, a lot of rejections, but I believe if you really want to do it, you will", she says.

Yixiang's beginnings
Deborah Vogel, the course leader for the University's MA Journalism programme recalls the early signs of her now characteristic focus. On the first day of contact, says Deborah, Yixiang had prepared a shopping list of questions, she had clearly given much thought.

As one of her lecturers, Yixiang surfed under the radar for the best part of the first semester. In the second semester she opted to the online module. The running joke for online from Masters students is   "you will die and be reborn".  Apparently it's something I said in jest which took off.

However, because of the volume and nature of work the joke wears out very quickly. Students have to believe they can take the pressure of design, coding, writing, multimedia, whilst committing themselves to understanding technical and creative aspects of various softwares.

The close contact working with colleagues, sometimes enacting Soho Dotcom's Death March, means its not for the shrinking violet or those wanting an easy ride. You can't be shy working online in a team. So, Yixiang might have crossed my mind.

However two months in Yixiang wanted to meet for a problem. She had already consulted the "wisdom of crowds";  she was applying for a BBC online internship and wanted help writing the application, and only had a couple of days before the deadline. I asked her permission to use this email below.

from yixiang, many thanks

10 March 2008 13:34


Dear David,

I want to ask you that tomorrow could you kindly share some time with me discussing my application. I will have interview on Thursday.

I will bring my web critique and some other question answers, hope you could have a quick look, and comment on it.

Here is the link for the programme I applied:

www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/articles/2007/02/19/step_up_feature.shtml.

You might be very busy, but I really need some help, and your suggestions and comments will be useful for me. 

I thank you in advance

yixiang

I passed the ball back to her to write it up first, so by the time we met and bar the odd change and how you sell yourself online, Yixiang had prepared a meticulous document pulling everything she had learnt together.

Yixiang at the BBC

After three filtering processes and a day's long interview, she got the position. Look up the link and see how you might fare.  By now as I documented in this blog post back then, Yixiang was becoming a women possesed - something we've had good laughs about.

What followed within her internship was an extraordinary balancing act of working with the BBC whilst meeting the course requirements for the MA programme. In her final project Yixiang decided on creating a site to showcase the talents of concert pianists at the world famous Royal School of Music. Pianism.co.uk has since come down from the web.



Perhaps it's the less spoken about fact that she is an accomplished pianist herself or that she wanted to shine a light on those she admired. Either way after three months she emerged with a website which would earn her a distinction.

It wasn't without its difficulties. Some of the pianists in emails were plaintively rude, but Yixiang shrugged of any rejections and got on with the task.

Graduating
After graduating as any student will know came the hard slog for work. Yixiang got into selection panels for the likes of CNN and along the way accrued her fair share of rejections.

However she had made a decision, a plan she was keeping too. Going back to China was not an option, so she was intent on carving out a career in the UK.The thought led her to enrol on an NCTJ  print course where she buried her head in law, public affairs, shorthand, and local politics.

The University of Westminster's modules are based on the NCJT, as well as the BJTC - which it still looks to for accreditation, but Yixiang's quest was to specifically understand the Brit market with a desire at the time to work at a local level.

And then as she puts it she was finally brainwashed. Working in local newspapers and contributing to the university's much vaunted online newspaper,  HA1, a competitor to local newspapers,  gave her the sense of how community news worked.

Anyone who has worked in local news knows the benefits of getting your hands dirty. I recall my first radio piece for BBC Radio Leicester in 1987 when I mispronounced Groby as Grow-bee, when it should be Groo-be. I spent 6 hours trying to figure out overnight at the station how to change and record that one word, before it got broadcast. I survived and spent three years on and off working the local beat.

For Yixiang the sum total of her past was about to come to a head. Along her journey other jobs would open up: the Financial Mail and The Independent where she did a stint as an award. And as she puts it, anytime she visited Harrow she had a mission. "I'd be thinking of a local news story and how I could pitch it to the local newspaper editor, with a different angle", she says.

Pitching is an exercise at the University we place a premium on. If you can't pitch, you can't sell.

Today the story of Yixiang is about to take a more interesting and highly fruitful turn - Hong Kong.

It doesn't get any better than that. Yet the principles that underpin her rise are as unpretentious as she is.  There is no magic bullet to making it work. As one of my mentors put it, every rejection letter is one step closer to the job you're after.

Or as someone who inspires me, and hopefully inspires you too says...how does it go? "Know what you want, don't be afraid of rejection and be nice to people".

Never a truer statement.

Postscript: As I was finishing this article, an email from Yixiang's prospective employer marked "confidential" landed asking a range of private work-related questions. You can't imagine what I might have said, can you? :)

Yixiang takes the applause

When multimedia dreams come true - Yixiang's story

She was like any other international student.

Eager, if not a little unsteady. Willing, if at times somewhat confused.

If it wasn't the bullet-speed variable accented English she had to get used to, it would have been the weather - muggy, grey and oh so uninspiring.

But Yixiang, proud to be in the UK, fulfilling the wishes she harboured for so long, soldiered on.

Yixiang, slight, with an infectious laugh, at first by default, went about things the not-so-easy-way.

I once invaded her privacy enquiring about the province she grew up in China and whether her parents could afford her being in the UK. The question, I suspect at the time had the undertone of.."are you rich?"

The response was courteous and parried. She was like so many other ambitious children, whose parents could just about afford to give their daughter the dream she wanted to pursue: study in the UK.

That's one of the few times I pried into a student's life.

Emerging Yixiang
In the second semester, Yixiang lit up. She became more enquiring. The shy girl was now doing twenty questions with me ever so often.

In fact there were many times when I'd appear in the door way, spot Yixiang and then think "oh no!"

By now Yixiang would have spotted me and made light of the distance between us, with another question.

Yixiang, I just saw you thirty seconds ago with the same question, I would bemoan. We've laughed about it many times since.

Then I'd set about explaining or sending her off to the library for the specific book.

What Yixiang might have lacked in the quick grasp, she more than made up in her undiminshing zeal.

I'm certain if I'd set her a task in the freezing snow, I'd come back three days later to see her persevering to finish the job, with indentions in the snow; more questions.

Last May, she mentioned she was applying for a BBC Scheme. What would they ask? And what did she need?

I listened and it was clear as always she had the answers, but was seeking validation.

You write and I'll check, I mentioned.

I didn't have to. Armed with her blog, her videos, radio packages et al, I would learn later that she ran over her interviewers.

They asked one question and Yixiang turned into a Banshee extolling what she had done and how, and why she needed to be a BBC Intern. She got the place.

Behind Yixiang
What I haven't told you was she was the last interviewee and first saw and applied for the position with a day to spare.

Her BBC mentors spoke highly of her. At the point she was into 3 minutes of her 8 minute soliloquy, they'd decided to giver her the much coveted place.

In final projects, Yixiang, back from the BBC, would burn the candle both ends and was rewarded for it: a distinction.

She had managed to convince some of the best musicians from around the world, studying at the Royal College of Music to film them, write about them, become part of their lives.

The email traffic between herself and interviewees is the stuff of book plots. You don't get to be one of the best musicians in the world by not wanting to control your own PR.

The Now Yixiang
Today I heard back from Yixiang, doing some shifts at a local newspaper nearby, but now, now, she has secured an internship with CNN International.

Many of us teared up. Yes I did as well. Brilliant!

That little shy girl has transformed and continues to do so.

Her willingness to learn and general outlook is intoxicating, and if she will afford me this indulgence, it's something I kicked myself about, attempting to study for my degree having spent many years in Ghana.

And perhaps like Yixiang not quite understanding the environment around me.

So please raise a glass, water-filled even, for Yixiang, and for the triumph of perseverance, the right attitude and that age old mantra - if you want help, you must try and help yourself first.

Last week I received an anonymous email. As I recall that moment I'm smiling now. It was from the RTS, the Royal Television Society, an august body, requesting whether I would be interested in being one of the jury members at the 2009 awards.

I smiled because in my heart I believe in years to come one Yixiang will be emailing me to say she's been invited to judge the extraordinary work of others.

In my heart, there are many Yixiangs, but only one Yixiang and she is testimony that dreams do come true.

I pray and hope her new custodians, CNN, take good care of her.