Day Eight: Monday October 21st

Our last planned day of activities, and we visited the BBC Scotland! I was super excited to visit and I wasn’t disappointed. It was a fantastic experience. I’ve always had a positive relationship with the BBC seeing as I like many of the things that they produce, so it was a great opportunity to actually visit the Scottish headquarters in Glasgow. After watching a video and listening to a small presentation about what the BBC Scotland is all about we were taken on a tour of the building. The building is architecturally magnificent. It is modern, clean, and functional and I liked that there was so much natural light and open space! On our tour we were shown around the building and got to see where people work, where things take place, etc...I really liked that there were no offices and that everyone was working together, never enclosed. It was interesting to hear the director talk about how the BBC, at its heart a news agency, is a storyteller, and when they hire people they hire people who can tell the stories in the best possible way. That doesn’t mean that one must have a degree in journalism, but that a person can come from a variety of fields of expertise. An environmental science major may be hired to write and research the news on a recent oil spill for example. The BBC is just another example of how storytelling is everywhere and comes in all different shapes and sizes. The BBC Scotland even has a Gaelic broadcasting section which is positive for the continuation of the Gaelic language.

After the BBC I returned to the hotel to grab my bags and take the train back to Edinburgh. After arriving in Edinburgh I relaxed a bit and then that evening I ate fantastic vegetarian food at the restaurant next to our hotel and then found a music event to go to at the Royal Mile Tavern. There was a singer song writer type of guy there singing cover songs of pop music. He was fun and got some of us dancing, and although he was quite a horrible singer his guitar skills made up for his lack of vocals. Overall he didn’t really make an impression on me. He was any other guy singing in a bar.