Kirill Reztsov - Engineers Australia scholarship recipient
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HSS: So tell me about the scholarship. What made you apply and where did you hear about it from?
Kirill: I think I got an email about it from HSS, we normally get those orange In Brief emails and that's where I saw it and made me apply.
HSS: Did you have an interest in the organisation? Had you heard of the magazine (Engineers Australia) before?
Kirill: I had never heard of it, I had no idea engineers had a magazine at all. I think that as part of your journalism degree, it's really useful to do practical experience...This is one sort of practical experience and I thought I'd take it, even though it's an area I have no idea about. I have no idea about engineering whatsoever but I thought you know, I might as well apply.
Kirill at the Awards Night
From l to r: Dr Dietrich Georg, (Managing Editor, Engineers Australia, Kirill Reztsov, Theo van Leeuwen (HSS Dean)
HSS: Having said it was an area you had no idea about prior to your work experience, what did you get out of your internship?
Kirill: Well, I think I got practical experience in a magazine out of the experience, which I think is really useful.
HSS: Had you had practical experience at a magazine before?
Kirill: Never at a magazine - I think that having had that experience is really useful if you want to be a journalist - even though it might be a very specialised sort of magazine, it's still nonetheless a magazine. And because I was able to write about topics I had no idea about-
HSS: For example?
Kirill: Bridges, construction site safety, conveyor belts...Because I can do that, I think it shows myself and any sort of prospective employer that I can write on all sorts of topics and that I can sort of hit the ground running even though I might not have a background in that particular area.
HSS: And having written about stuff that you'd never written about before like bridges or construction sites, has that boosted your confidence or led to you consider things like specialist magazines which you might not have considered before?
Kirill: Well certainly, I hadn't known that there were any specialist magazines at all. This magazine has quite a high circulation and manages to turn a profit and operate as a very sort of successful enterprise and I just didn't think it was possible to have a specialist magazine that could do that. I had no idea we even had specialist magazines because I thought that the only magazines we had were the ones you could buy in newsagencies.
So I think this experience has broadened my awareness certainly of the journalism industry and the sort of range of options that are out there beyond the obvious ones, like ABC, Fairfax, News Limited, etc.
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