My Time as the Easiliving Student Blogger

Posted on December 20th, 2016

Rain, rain, rain. That is all I remember about my first day at Easiliving. Rain to the point that I nearly didn’t show up. If I would’ve known at the time that the walk from my house was double what I expected then maybe I wouldn’t have. 6 months (and a lot more rain) later and my time as Easiliving’s student blogger is coming to an end. Although I am excited about moving on (I’m going to New Zealand for a year so I’d be crazy not to be) my time here has been a fantastic experience. So it seemed fitting to do a little summary of my time here along with a few tips for my successor, Sara from Studs on Saturday.

Introducing your new Easiliving Student Blogger!

As someone who has never done the whole sitting at a desk thing, I wasn’t expecting to particularly enjoy my days in the office. I was nervous at first. It took me a few weeks before I felt comfortable saying more than a few words but once I’d settled in I really liked the routine I was in. It did help that I only had to do it once a week, had multiple holidays and I only came in at 10am.

The tasks were really varied and I came to learn a lot more about the inner workings of an estate agent than I ever thought I’d need. I now know what Gemini is and can do at least 3 out of the 1000 things it’s used for.  Most of the days were filled with interesting and fun things like taking photos of houses, researching interesting things in the area for social media and eating the chocolates meant for the customers. When I started coming in more than once a week, I certainly couldn’t complain.

Your Easiliving Student Bloggers, old and new.

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all fun and games. We don’t talk about October. The month filled with spreadsheets and admin will forever be blocked from my mind. My aversion to conversing with strangers was also tested with a trip to the Newcastle University Housing Fair but after the first few rejections and snarky looks, I put my effort into talking to the people who were actually interested in what I had to say. Or at least the people interested in the sweets I was holding. While positive steps were made here, I’ve still managed to end my 6 months without ever answering the office phone.

The minor stresses were worth it though. I was amazed by the response from students on both social media and the blog. The highlight of my time has definitely been seeing people benefit from what I’ve been doing. Whether it was sharing my top tips for things to do in Newcastle or advertising someone’s dream property on Facebook, it’s nice to know that what I’m doing is worthwhile for something other than my bank account. I’m definitely going to miss this

My Tips for the Next Student Blogger

• Prepare to be a stereotypical young person. You will be asked about any and all issues with social media or other “young” things. The phrase “you’re young, you’ll know” will be thrown around with reckless abandon and most of the time you will not know. Just press some buttons and act like any issue isn’t your fault.
• Be ready for anything. As I’ve mentioned above, the job can involve literally anything, good, bad and ugly. Literally. One morning I rolled out of bed late, looking particularly awful and raced to the office to find out that today was company photo shoot day. It’s a cruel world.
• Bring lunch with you. If you don’t you will go to Dene’s Deli everyday, you will get fat and you will be poor.
• Save the passwords. I’m pretty sure I’ve wasted hours of Nadia’s time asking for a specific password that I definitely only asked for a week ago.
• Drink hot drinks. It is considered very weird that I don’t drink tea or coffee. I’m like another species that needs to be studied.

Thanks for reading this blog over the past few months! I hope you’ve found at least some of my ramblings helpful! If you fancy following me on my travels, then you can check out my blog, Real World Runaway, here. Keep your eyes peeled for Sara’s first post which will be coming soon!