You might have noticed I’ve itched for this moment since I got to university, but I reluctantly reset the keycard to my room at Royal Holloway.  If anyone’s living in Tuke F-3A-05 in future, and you happen to stumble across this post, look underneath the desk next to the bed, and you should see a small sticker.  Nick Stylianou 2008-2009.  I like leaving my mark.  I’ll miss that room!

But before I crammed everything into my car and drove home far too hungover and with far little petrol to justifiably make it home, I can’t believe how much I’d achieved in the short months I’d been at university, but still, there were a a few little things to finish off my final term of being a first year.

First of all: the Summer Ball!  I made it right through to 6am, with the help of far too many shots right up until breakfast.  I’m a survivor, me.

Then came my final bit of publicity for The Orbital before the term was out – covering our first ever Shakespeare Festival!  Both InsanityRadio and The Orbital put on a ‘media hub’, culminating in a slideshow of our photos and live reviews, collated and displayed throughout the day, to a soundtrack of interviews from local students who attended the day’s workshops.  (Perks included the generous ‘Media Budget’, which helped subsidise some much needed equipment and I got free tickets to the rather chilly annual Quad Production…)

The Students’ Union Annual General Meeting ticked off another evening, and I found out I got onto the Intensive Shakespeare course and passed the year!  Full breakdown to follow in July, but that’s all the information I needed.

Somehow, while preparing for End Of Term Blowout, I managed to lose my CollegeCard.  I’d already managed to snap it earlier in the week, but it was replaced easily enough.  No big deal, or so I thought.  As it turned out, this was my third lock-out, which meant I had to pay the princely sum of £10 for a temporary card to last 24 hours!  It didn’t stop there, because I also managed to pack the temporary card and couldn’t find that, either.

Off I trotted to celebrate the end of term, with absolutely no way of getting home.  I managed to find someone at The Hub reception, at about twenty to six in the morning, without finishing packing, without sobering up, and without a sweater from sitting in the post-SU after-party in Founder’s Quad.  Whatever would my mother say?

Six hours later and I was back home, and if I’d learned anything it would have to be this: don’t fall asleep on the sofa with Saturday afternoon TV on.  I ended up having a wierdly erotic BBC renovation-themed dream involving RHUL.

Waking up in what I hope was a cold sweat, I found reruns of Dog The Bounty Hunter and all was well again.

26/5 [1334] I’ve filled up the car, I’ve been food shopping and I’ve had my hair butchered. Time to drive back to RHUL.

26/5 [1546] I went straight to the office. I’m currently begging the printers to not charge me. This is simple, seeing as I haven’t finished (or started) the issue.

27/5 [2006] I’ve been in the office for hours. I’m now watching the Champions League final there on my projector, eating a Pot Noodle and proofing.

28/5 [0045] I’m still in the office, going slowly mad. I bought cake for my Editorial Team, but they still hate me. I can hear them curse me…

28/5 [0458] I would rather be anywhere in the world than the Queen’s Annexe right now.  I haven’t left the desk since 11am on Wednesday. Am I finished? Am I f-

28/5 [1748] I’ve left the office for only the second time since 11am Wednesday to get ready for the Laurel Awards Ceremony. Never mind that deadline…

29/5 [0907] went straight from the Laurels to the Office to slave away again. He’s racking up his 46th hour in here. Cabin fever? Please note:  I’m still in full dinner suit attire.

29/5 [2359] I feel like everything since Tuesday has been one continuous day. The Jack Bauer of journalism?

30/5 [1619] I’ve called in the cavalry and broken out the chocolate fingers.  Any more calls from the printers about bleed areas and I’ll go insane.  At least I’ve changed my clothes.

30/5 [2240] I’m now designing an issue on what feels like the office on the surface of the sun. I’m sweltering. I’ve locked the door and taken off my top. Topless editing:  I mean business.

31/5 [0004]  I’m screaming “Hey! Editor, I’m undeniable! Hey, Doctor, I’m certifiable, oh…”

31/5 [1335] I’m remarkably annoyed that Nick Grimshaw had no idea who Butthole Surfers were.  Radio1 is the only thing telling me what time it is.

31/5 [1418] I have no idea what sort of meat was in my bowl of ravioli and, quite frankly, I don’t care. It’s my first meal for 24hrs.

31/5 [1832] I hope no-one tells me that he’s wasting his life editing an article on bra size surcharges.  Now, where to put that picture of breasts…

31/5 [2353] I’m cutting this, I’m cutting that, I’m still carving out an issue.

1/6 [0121] I’ve just realised I haven’t had dinner. Bit late for that now, I guess. On to exporting EPS! Boot up Adobe Distiller and we’re out of here…

1/6 [0151] I’ve finished the issue, pending a check from my lovely Executive Editor. And they say flattery gets you nowhere. Now for Volunteering Week…

1/6 [0932] I’m up, showered, shaved (he desperately needs new foils) and ready for Volunteering Week.

1/6 [1136] I just saved over The Orbital with the Volunteering Week templates, half an hour before the print deadline. I want to die.

1/6 [1214] I met the deadline. Just. I hope Morton understands his ‘creative time-management’.

On deadline day, I was involved in a joint The Orbital/Insanity session for local school children as part of Volunteering Week, teaching them how we put stuff together in print and on air. I made some funky templates and then saved over the (thank christ, already exported) front page of the publication. Smooth, Mr. Editor, smooth.

On deadline day, due to Volunteering Week/eating, I missed a call from the printers, who rang my Executive Editor, who rang me, a call which I missed, who texted me, which I started to read before the President of the Students’ Union rang me.  Repeat this three times and the system developed that you’d just get the President to ring me to tell me to ring the printers/Executive Editor.  Anyone would think I was ignoring my Executive Editor.  Not true, honest!

Mortons Print, my lovely pre-press/press people, couldn’t get enough of telling me what I’d done wrong.  This image would be cropped, this was the wrong size, did you put the images in CMYK not RGB? (yes!) Did you want the edges to bleed through here, where the spread is just – look, just print the damn thing.  Please.  Efficiency and thoroughness definitely got on my nerves.

I’ve slept for approximately five hours in a week, to almost single-handedly pull off the biggest change The Orbital has seen in almost twenty years.  There’s a lot of almosts in there,  and there’s also a long way to go.  I couldn’t have survived without my equally-insane Editorial Team, who had to endure me barking orders at them, and most notably shouting ‘I wanted to be a journalist, not mayor of crazy town!’, at various intervals.

Although I’d looked at Adobe InDesign CS4 and various PDFs countless times, I can’t tell you the physical and emotional relief when I actually saw the palette, with 3000 copies of my creation sitting outside the SU building on schedule, on time, on Thursday 4th June.

For the curious among you, I’d better mention that the quote on the inside front page of the newspaper is from the first edition of the Yale Daily News…where Rory Gilmore served as editor.

The innovation which we begin by this morning’s issue is justified by the dullness of the time and the demand for news among us.

I now produce a fortnightly newspaper with a monthly magazine supplement.  My life expectancy has drastically shortened.  Roll on, September.  Let’s do it all again.

My first year of university.  Nearly.

My first set of university exams.  Tick.

Now, I have no idea whether or not I’ve passed or failed, or even attained enough to make it onto my beloved Shakespeare course next year – these things make me feel very ill whenever I think about them.

Of course I got stopped by police again, this time on campus, this time by some arrogant plain clothes student lookalike from the Hampshire Constabulary.  Sure, we’re in Surrey, and sure, you sound like you learned how to police (and drive your Volkswagen Golf) from Bad Boys, but even I know when to just be quiet and say ‘yes, sir/no sir’.   But I’m still complaining.  Let’s ring up Surrey Police:  please ring Hampshire Police.  Hampshire Police: please ring Surrey Police.  Don’t you just love this country?  A man might be impersonating a police officer!  My claim was lost in the mire of bureaucracy.

Although the majority of achievements for a typical Fresher have been checked and completed already, I’ve still got an entire publication to create, the NewsShow to stumble through, a set of birthday parties to turn up to, a Summer Ball to go to and a Shakespeare Festival to plan a ‘media hub’ for.  Term ending?  Responsibilities over?  Not for me.

I’d better stop complaining, start pleading for advertising/submissions and continue taking photos.

The sooner I tick those off, the better.

I came back the Tuesday following Greek Easter, which was the week after ‘normal’ Easter, simply because us Orthodox types like to be different.  It never fails to amuse me how the dates grow a week apart for about four years until, after reaching nearly a month away from each other, the following year snaps the calendar back to having them on the same day. Rinse and repeat.  So I was unable to return to campus to continue revising until I’d eaten my own body weight in family cuisine and Greek delicacies (and also beaten my extended family at Mario Kart, too.).

What did my glorious alma mater have for me upon my return?  Well, a nice bit of sunshine and lots of frantically stressful meetings about The Orbital.  Good news about the weather, though, right? No, once term had officially started a week later, I was well on my way to having one of the worst weeks ever.

My fantastically little, yet expensive, bus-powered FW400 LaCie Rugged 500GB HDD failed.  Yep, failed. Inexplicably.  And, of course, seeing as it was filled to the brim with 19 years of accumulated music, torrented movies, TV shows and a little bit of precious data from The Orbital, I hadn’t backed it up. Of course.  Cue frantic Googling for ‘forensic data recovery’ and subsequent posting of my drive to Rapid Data Recovery.  £97-£170, they quoted me.  95% success rate, they told me. I thought I’d stave off my breakdown for a bit, in the vain hope/faith that everything would be alright.  After some frantic phonecalls every day for three days, well after my drive was Specially Delivered by Royal Mail, I couldn’t get through to this company.  What?  I’d spoken to a nice Welsh man only a few days previously! Well, on Tuesday I received a phone call in which my dear old account manager informed me that

“….your drive was a bit like a record player with a broken needle.  Every time we tried to recover the data, the needle effectively scored a new layer on the disk – resulting in 98% corrupted data.”

Why did he sound so jolly?

“Our affiliate, however, assures us that they can recover 100% of the data, and mail it to you on a new drive by Friday.  However, it’s a little more expensive.  £454, to be precise.  Now, if I could get your card details…”

In some sort of giddy stupor, drunk on the promise that my precious, precious data would be recovered, I gave this man my card details over the phone.  I have received no invoice to date, and my phone calls to the company have resulted in me learning their hold music off by heart and various staffers telling me that it’s in the post, that they’ll re-email me the invoices….If it’s not delivered by 6th May (seeing as it’s a Bank Holiday Weekend), and I don’t have sufficient communciation/a courier tracking number, I will be strapping explosives to a handgun and marching on their headquarters.  I’m now also over-budget by £150 for the entire month of May.  Already. Drinks are on you.

I thought my terrible week would end there, except my Slingbox also gave up the ghost, putting my procrastination at peril – no live TV, no downloaded content!  I had to live on iPlayer and 4OD.  Disaster.  That is of course, assuming I could actually get into my room – I lost my keycard on Monday and with nobody to let me into the flat and our buzzer-system not working for some of the other members of the block, I was stranded outside Tuke Block F looking quite folorn.  Luckily, someonehad located and handed in my precious CollegeCard and I retrieved it first thing Tuesday morning.  I only had my phone to then misplace later to fully complete Possession-Loss Bingo.

On the upside, my bad-news meetings regarding The Orbital are still in full swing, and I had my first official InsanityRadio Board Meeting as Head of Training for 2009-2010. If my Students’ Union were a lady….erm, I have no idea where I was going with that, but I’m going to leave it in – feel free to finish the sentence.

Oh, and there was the small matter of my EN1107 Inventing The Novel exam.  For three hours.  On Wednesday.  Given my inadequate preparation, I was living on borrowed time for that one, definitely repeating the 40% pass-mark mantra.  Considering I got nearly full marks in my A2 Gothic Synoptic paper, the most difficult question by far was the one I decided to answer on Frankenstein. Silly.  Lesson learnt?  Don’t assume Summer 2008 knowledge stays with you longer than it absolutely has to.  I did manage to work in the phrases ‘bastardisation’ and ‘not to trivialise murder, but…”. Little else, though.

What to do after that?  Drive home and have a roast dinner, of course.

Just when my week couldn’t get any worse, I left my house, full of chicken and potatoes to return to the Egham residence I call home.  I was making brilliant time!  I got to Guildford in eight minutes!  Passing some parked cars on the way to Woking, I noticed that the last in the line was almost multi-coloured…oh, hold on, they’re following me.  Blue lights?  Right.  Pull over. Where?  There’s traffic lights!  Fine, just pull over!

Shit.

I might’ve been going a tad fast, but the dialogue between the good officers of Surrey Police and myself was completely ridiculous.  I’ve seen enough Street Wars programmes to know that you stay in the car until you’re told otherwise.  Apparently not, in Surrey.  Once in the freezing cold, I handed over my license and registration, responsibly responding that “no, this car is not ‘nicked.’”

Playing some sort of tag-team game, the officers kept swapping over and asking me the same questions until I asked whether I could get a jacket during their prolonged conversation with each other in their nice warm squad car.  Have I had a drink tonight, officer?  No, sir?  Oh, you’re going to breathalyse me?  Good.  Well, of course it’s negative.  Sigh.  After dismantling the breathalyser for the kind officers, I’ll just wait here in the cold for a bit longer, shall I?

Police officer number two comes out and the dénouement of my encounter with the police finally begins.

“Your insurance expired last year.  And you’ve told my colleague that you haven’t renewed it yet, which means that we’re going to have to impound your car.”

“Um…no (points to certificate of insurance) that’s 28th May 2008 to 27th May 2009.”

“Oh, right, but see here it says 27th May 2009 and it’s the 29th today.”

“Um…nope, it’s the 29th April today.”

“Right, let me just make some enquiries….”

What, that April comes before May?  I freeze my arse off opposite the Magnet kitchen place and get an expected mini-lecture on speeding.

Another lesson learned – Mario Kart may not have police, but real life does.  Although I’m sure that even Yoshi knows the correct date.

Sitting alone in the flat seems to be a habit of mine, and I’m still no sure whether I’m an agoraphobic sociopath or just plain lazy.  Let’s hope it’s the latter, eh?  Yeah, that’ll be it.  Probably.  Oo-err.

SURHUL have had another elections season, this time for the Executive Committee.  Politics, at even the base student level, simply exposes the fallacies of a finite term in any office.  Student volunteers in a part-time position for less than one solid year?  There’s going to be little ‘change we can believe in‘ at Royal Holloway.  Prove me wrong! (Please?)

Oh, our Principal has resigned.  Did you hear that?  No surprise, most of my student brethren are apathetic, or didn’t even know who the Principal was in the first place.  Either Egham is a black hole of activism or I’m just plugged in to everything to avoid my degree – oh, that’ll be it.  Nick Stylianou, the information sponge?

The end of term – this mean’s I’ve submitted all of my essays and now look forward to three exams in April/May.  Wonderful.  Seeing as my timed essays were slightly better than mediocre (i.e. suitable enough to pass the year), glorious complacency will no doubt set in.  I’m looking forward to the last-minute stress overload.  “Fuck it, 40%” seems to be the 2009 mantra.

So now I’m officially Editor of the SURHUL Publication for a year.  Let’s see what this new chapter has in store for me, shall we?  It’ll give me a bit more to do than sporadic theatre trips, wishing I was abroad while constantly refreshing lastminute.com flights and trundling around the Guildford/Godalming area in Fifi listening to Fall Out Boy.  I’ll be ringing up print companies for quotes, firing up Adobe InDesign, replying to bizarre press releases and begging for interviews and free tickets.

You probably skipped over the bizarre press releases bit.  Oh, Nick, he’s always exaggerating. No, really, among all the NUS statements, new music circulars, occasional DVD screeners, I received a press release about ‘condoms for dogs’.  Mmhmm.

Condoms.  For dogs.

Needless to say, I deleted it, but not immediately.  It required further investigation.  Sadly, it didn’t garner any adequate responses.  Do you have to apply it to the dog when it becomes aroused?  Do you have to play ‘wingman’ to your dog when he’s out on the pull, diving in when he’s just about to get his little doggy-groove on to suppress that unwanted puppy pregnancy?  Or do you staple this contraption permanently on your canine friend, producing horrifically explosive and unimaginable retrograde results?

These aren’t questions that keep me up at night, thank God.

I can always rely on my hobbies to nicely tick over and aid my time-wasting:  I’m still taking a photo a day, which surprises even myself sometimes.  I’m occasionally getting up in the morning and even the weather’s brightening up.  I’m definitely having some sort of identity crisis….

This is what I’m doing at any one time.  But for now,  I’ve got to pack my car up to go home.  Three weeks of MarioKart Wii-playing a-hoy!  I will beat you.  Waluigi is a master of karting disaster.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I told you I’ve been horrendously busy, so a quick recap?  I got a few poorly-written essays back, with poor marks.  I went to Societies’ Ball.  I didn’t win either of the two awards I was nominated for.  I didn’t have a very good evening.  I resigned from The Founder.

Why?  Because I decided to climb that greasy pole. Sure, it sounds like I haven’t had a good few weeks.  Whinge whinge, moan moan.

It’s been SURHUL elections season.

I ran for SU Publication Editor, commonly referred to as Editor of The Orbital.  I won.

Through stress and strain, with the help of a faithfully lovely set of campaign aides, canvassing in the freezing cold and snow, I won.

After Candidates’ Question Time, being grilled more than flaming beef, I won.

I was uncontested, but I didn’t want to seem arrogant, so I campaigned hard.  I didn’t enter the elections to gain power or accolade.  I wanted to change the SU publication into something better.  And restore faith to something I felt had massive potential.  I put my heart and soul into my speech for Candidates’ Question Time.  Maybe I didn’t smile enough.  Maybe I was too stern.  I was worried about portraying myself badly.  I think, unnaturally, I was tense.  Not nervous, just tense.  I didn’t repeat my manifesto verbatim – copies were available at the ballot boxes, online and on request.  I worked hard on something which was mine and which was much more importantly honest.

Being Orbital Editor is more than just being any society president.  It also encompasses being the editor of the Student’s Union Publication. That’s not only a role encompassing commitment and professionalism, but it also requires a much larger responsibility to all the students of Royal Holloway: (and that’s) trust.

The editor of the Guardian on its 100th birthday, CP Scott, famously wrote ‘comment is free, but facts are sacred’.
It’s that trust which needs to be upheld by whoever is chosen as editor, and for our facts to be relevant to an audience of over 8 000 students.  We need to understand and respond to the basic premise of campus media in the first place. Without a relevant publication, the publication ceases to exist.

Informing students in the best way possible may encompass a variety of formats and opinions, but it is imperative that we get a fundamentally coherent message across campus.

We’ve got a moral duty to deliver necessary information (and viewpoints) on which you can make a range of decisions about your union; as well as maintain a material existence.  The editor must operate both sides of the publication’s activity: it costs money to print, so I’ve got to make sure I can manage that. The trick is to find unity between the business and the message.  I feel I have the required skills to handle such a task, with valuable experience in enterprise and journalism.

The publication is, as Mr. Scott states: ‘an institution’.  It reflects and influences the life of a whole community – our community.
I want an informative Orbital:  the overwhelming majority of students I spoke to today look elsewhere to find out what’s happening on campus – that’s not just news, but reviews and opinion, too.

I want to improve how it’s running at the moment: online and in print.

But above all, I want to inspire students to read, write for and be proud of your publication. It is your publication. But I can’t start without gaining your trust.

But the lesson I’ve learned from this election season?  That I don’t like pigeon-holing.  I don’t like being categorised, or second-guessed.  I’m not just ‘that guy who doesn’t write for The Orbital’ or ‘that guy who’s clearly a new version of x’ or even ‘that arrogant wanker’.  My public persona takes a lot out of me.

Maybe it’s too much of Freud’s The Uncanny.  Or maybe I’m having an identity crisis?  I suppose if I knew certainly who I am, it would make it easier for me to know who I’m not.  How quintessentially adolescent.

This place is a little community.  And the problem with a cyclical little community is that there’s only enough change you can believe in before it all starts to sound the same.  Never mind about equality diversity, I’m talking about politics and sociology.  You’ve only got one chance to allow people to like you or dislike you.  And quite obviously it’s a pity there’s no answer booklet.  Now that’s pressure.  Especially since there’s only a finite amount of people here!

Forever incomplete.  And tomorrow I turn nineteen.  Maybe this time next year I’ll have more answers.  I’ll hopefully have a few successful tries under my belt by then.  And some issues of The Orbital.