Good question. As the Tertangala’s new chief editor, I’d like to unpack what’s happened.
A rough time for student life it has indeed been and the Tertangala hasn’t escaped unscathed. If you’ve tried to click onto past articles you would have come up against a void of internet. There’s no easy way to say it, but our website and years of students’ works vanished into the great digital beyond. I want to apologise to anyone who has lost their work and while we haven’t been able to recover the website, troubleshooting will keep going to see if there’s any way to restore it.
New editor on the block
Somehow yours truly managed to avoid a great deal of stupol hacking and landed the position of the Tertangala’s coordinator for the remainder of 2021. It’s not ideal to take over a student magazine in the business end of first semester, but lemonade from lemons and all that. Kudos to the handful of students getting involved despite the deluge of assessment deadlines coming our way.
In 2020, the absolute clusterf-ck that tertiary education and society more broadly became (more so than it already was) meant that the Tertangala’s quarterly print issues were shelved and student motivation naturally wavered. Again, kudos to the students who kept up with remote journalism across the Tert and UOWTV.
If you’re at all curious about what makes me qualified to run the Tert and want a completely unbiased view, I can tell you why. I was that annoying first-year journalism student who was so freaked out about not getting a grad job that I signed up for absolutely everything. I even started a student magazine with two friends that ran for two years until the three of us burned out. I’ve also contributed writing, video and audio to UOWTV. On a practical level I feel like it just makes sense to have an actual journalism student running the university’s student magazine. Of course, this isn’t to say that students from different faculties couldn’t do a fantastic job.
Hopefully, this editorial shines some light on any mystery surrounding the Tertangala’s fate.
Calling all contributors
That’s enough self-indulgence for now. It’s time to give the spiel about why you should dust off your writing skills, roll up your sleeves and submit to the Tert. If you have a pulse, you’ve heard the phrase practice makes perfect. It’s safe to say that most people don’t haplessly fall into their career path (unless their parents paid their way). Think of the Tert as a step in the right direction toward figuring out what you want to do to get that bread. 🥖
Whether you want to write fiction, non-fiction or do some hard-hitting multimedia student journalism, you can pitch every week at our editorial meeting. The link to the meeting can be found in our contributor Facebook group. You won’t be thrown in without help. Our editorial meetings can help you link up with editors and collaborators to try and bring ideas to life. The Tertangala will only be as strong as contributions from students across all subjects. The more you help out, the more experience you can receive in return. Making friends through student life also makes uni that much more enjoyable. And this is coming from someone who wouldn’t have met their partner if it wasn’t for starting a club and going to O-Week. A beefed up portfolio will always make employers salivate. It also doesn’t hurt when your name pops up on the first page of search engine results–for the right reasons.
On a less individualistic and self-centred level, we can all make university more enjoyable and engaging if we pitch in to help student life flourish. The main function of the Tertangala is to make what’s happening at the university and community accessible.
If you have any questions feel free to reach out on social media or email thetert@gmail.com.