Thomas Lundy, GrDip 21, was preparing to embark on Concordia’s Graduate Diploma in Journalism program when the COVID-19 pandemic forced students around the world to study and attend classes from home. The switch to online studies was problematic for him.
“My computer could barely run the video-editing software we were using in the program. There was a whole depot of hardware at Concordia journalism school that would have helped, but we didn’t have access to it anymore. “I was really slammed by the pandemic.”
Lundy, who finished his diploma during the third wave of the pandemic in the spring of 2021, credits the Philip Fisher Graduate Diploma Bursary for giving him the tools he needed to succeed.
“I instantly was able to get a laptop that allowed me to do Zoom and have recording software and video editing running at the same time without my computer crashing. It made things 100 times easier.”
The bursary also helped Lundy get his “dream job.” During the program, he secured an internship at Canadian Geographic magazine, where he is now assistant editor.
“Working there was my objective when I applied for the program, but I didn’t actually expect to achieve it, literally!” Like many in the journalism diploma program, Lundy arrived with experiences from outside the journalism world — in his case, a degree in marine zoology from Newcastle University in the United Kingdom.
“I applied to Concordia because I wanted to write about science, but in a different way,” says the Manchester native, who previously worked as a publishing assistant at an academic journal, as a technical writer and as an English teacher.
“I needed practical skills in journalism — not just writing, but visual media and technical software skills,” says Lundy, whose professional life had carried him from the U.K. to Australia and Japan before he opted to study at Concordia.
“There is so much you need to learn to do before you even put pen to paper. The Concordia program had all of that.” Lundy studied feature writing, research and visual media, but says learning how to interview was a breakthrough.
“I was nervous about it but now I really enjoy it. Working at Canadian Geographic puts me in the fortunate position of being able to interview a lot of interesting people.”
