A happy new year to you all out there in readerland. We're in the middle of putting together issue 7 of Pugwash News, the first (hopefully of many!) for 2008.

I hope you all spent at least some of your free time over the holidays taking a break from coursework and/or the obligatory part-time job almost every University student I've ever known has had to take on to pay the bills.

Students are generally regarded as one of the most hard-core groups of job-hunters, accepting offers of employment as diverse as turkey inseminators (eww) and deckchair assistants (a position better suited to the summer months, admittedly), and anything in-between.

I've spent my Christmas taking a good look at what makes student employment tick, looking at students' union "job shop" websites across the country, as well as some of the larger ones including Monster and The Grauniad... sorry, The Guardian.

This hasn't been because I'm getting cold feet in my current position as Media Officer, but because I've been working hard on the new UPSU JobShop website. The old website's done us proud, with thousands of students finding part-time work each year through the Union - and not a single turkey-farm job in sight - but for technical reasons, the old JobShop website hasn't seen any development over the last few years, and has to run on a separate web server away from the rest of the UPSU.net website, making it difficult to really highlight the wide range of part-time jobs our JobShop is so popular for across the rest of the website.

Hopefully it’ll all be done and dusted and ready to turn on (at upsu.net/jobshop) around the third week of January, fingers crossed!

We’ve also got a massive archive of back-issues of Pugwash magazine and Pugwash News online on the Pugwash website - there’s loads of great articles in there from previous years which are still as relevant today as they were when they were published, and are well worth a look (during breaks in revision, of course!).

I've also spent some of my hard-earned on a new pair of DJing headphones, as my last pair fell apart after 12 years' use, so at last I should be able to start putting together some new mixes to listen to, play on Pure FM, and annoy everyone in the Sabb office with ;o)

There’s a point to this rambling stream-of-consciousness, of course: with the Sabb Elections beginning in the next couple of weeks, and voting in the first week of March, I’ve been thinking about what makes a good Media Officer.

I’ve got a bit of a web design background, have a passing acquaintance with DJing and radio production, can use Quark and Photoshop to knock out something approaching a half-decent publication, and even know which way round to hold a camera.

Similarly, previous Media Officers have boasted skills as wide-ranging as video production, radio presenting, news journalism, management experience (and something they call “people skills”, although I’m not convinced they’re any more real than the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus… ;o), artistic flair… the list goes on.

There doesn’t seem to be any particular “theme” here though - UPSU Media Officers don’t seem to have a common interest, hobby, past-time or skill, apart - possibly - from a masochistic streak when it comes to working hard.

Generally speaking, what sets Sabbatical Officers apart from your average student? It’s as simple - and as vague - as this:...