Application for the Campus Magazine

This was originally written during the summer of 2010, applying for a columnist's position on the now sadly-defunct campus magazine.

Tim on Tim: The Definitive Article

It's easier to write in the third-person than the first, especially when the topic is oneself. Tim is a twenty-five-year old undergraduate Journalist at Leeds Trinity University. For the past seven years, he's been a fully-employed administrator for everyone from the Probation Service to corporate multinationals to local air-conditioning companies. Prior to that, he was a student and Sixth Former at Hymers College in Hull – he decided at the last possible minute not to go and study Computer Games and IT at Essex University in 2003.

The choice to study journalism wasn't a hard one; Tim's always known he can write well, and has freelanced for music magazines as a reviewer several times. Music journalism might not be the ultimate future for him, but it's definitely an option.

Speaking of music, Tim has some skills in that direction; he plays bass guitar, and performed with well-known Leeds Goth band Legion for a year and a half. He's currently attached to Distorted Pictures in the same role, but also cherishes the notion that he could be a lead singer one day.

Tim has been into the Goth scene since the mid-nineties and now owns precious few clothes that aren't black. It's important to note he isn't a devil-worshipper, doesn't like Marilyn Manson, won't wear eyeliner and doesn't murder indiscriminately. He'd love to be in a position to dispel the ugly rumours about Goths and is happy to have people ask him about the culture; rather that, than get chased by Chavs, because running in a trenchcoat is actually pretty damn difficult.

Above all, Tim enjoys being old. He likes music made before he was even born, prefers Doctor Who made before 1989, and read the Watchman comic twenty times before the movie even came out. Yes, he knows they changed the ending; No, he doesn't understand either.

He'll never understand wearing trousers halfway down your arse, or why televised talent shows are so successful, or the ongoing appeal of Jack Wills. If you want to wear pyjamas all the time, just do it – he'd be quite happy knocking about in his dressing gown, personally.

Any potential music journalist wouldn't be able to survive if he just liked Goth music; Tim's tastes are eclectic at best, running from Classical Symphonies, through early N.W.A and Beastie Boys, to modern acts like Kasabian and Lady Gaga. Yes, that's right, Lady Gaga; she's really just a direct descendant of such legendary electro-weirdoes as Kraftwerk and Gary Numan and Jean-Michel Jarré, even if she doesn't strive to hide the fact that she's just a reprogrammed Terminator. Seriously, just look into her eyes; nothing but glass, plastic and seething homicidal rage.

In his University application for this course, Tim cited Charlie Brooker of Guardian and Screenwipe fame as a definitive role model. Secretly, he suspects he's nowhere as angry or mean as Charlie, but so far Tim continues to write in the same vein and long may it continue!