Christmas Day - the day that changed my perspective of how journalism works
And so to December, and the first Forge Press story of the year to be picked up by the national press. The reason why, however, makes for a story in itself.
Last Wednesday, our Students' Union held their annual Christmas Day - a day which is known as 'legendary' among students and sees hundreds of people queue for hours to buy cut-price drinks at the Union bar.
While I enjoy the occasional drink, this one seemed like too much for me, and I decided to spend the day updating the Forge Today website instead.
Our office is based almost on top of Bar One, the bar where Christmas Day was being held, and I could hear everything that was going on as I worked.
I occasionally glanced outside the window to the patio area below, where students were drinking and being merry, and everything seemed to be pretty normal.
But then, one of my colleagues rushed in and told me I needed to go down to Glossop Road immediately, where students had been queueing to get into the bar, as it was full of police cars and ambulances.
Somewhat bewildered, I grabbed a camera and rushed down, only to be met by a sneering security guard who didn't like the look of my camera on my way out.
Ignoring him, I went outside and began taking pictures of the various emergency vehicles parked on the road, still not sure of what had happened.
I crossed the road and asked a few onlookers, who told me that a student had been knocked over.
And later, a call to the police confirmed that, tragically, an 18-year-old girl had been hit by a double decker bus after leaving the bar.
Now, you can make your own conclusions about the events that led up to this incident, but Forge Press reported the facts surrounding it, and this stopped any rumours or mistruths spreading via Twitter and Facebook.
And as soon as the story was shared via social media, it spread rapidly, as students tried to find out exactly what had happened.
Understandably, the story seemed to be attracting a lot of interest, but all that was on my mind was whether the girl was OK, and I didn't think much more of it.
However, two days later, local newspaper the Sheffield Star decided to put the story on their front page - and they used two of my photos to accompany it.
From a student journalist's perspective, a front page credit in the local press is like gold dust. But this felt extremely lucky. I had merely been in the right place at the right time.
But this is when the angle of the story began to change. There was still focus on the student who was fighting for her life, but there was also an emerging focus on the event itself, and a mounting criticism of the university for running it.
A local health chief had already branded the event as "irresponsible", and you only had to look at the comments section of the story to see what assumptions members of the public had already made about the circumstances surrounding the story.
Then, later that day, I received a call from my Editor, who had been on the phone to a picture agency who wanted the pictures I had taken to sell to national newspapers.
This surprised me somewhat, but as we spoke it became clear where the angle of the story was going.
And later that day, the Sun became the first national newspaper to pick up my story. But it wasn't my story any more. They had stretched the truth and changed the focus of the story completely, turning it into an attack on the bar and the student drinking culture, backed, of course, by the friendly local health chief who had slammed the event earlier in the day, and had moved the focus away from the student, who was still fighting for her life.
The Mail published a similar story later in the day, using my pictures, and several other national newspapers picked up the story overnight, focussing on the increasing pressure the university was coming under for holding such an event.
And the following day, to cap off a remarkable 72 hours, a somewhat less sensationalised version of the story became the third most-read story on BBC News.
It was a bizzare three days, and it took me through a range of emotions. Primarily, I felt sorry for the girl who had been hit. But at the same time, I felt lucky that I had been in the right place to take those photos, and been quick enough to be the first person to break the story which would eventually become national news.
It was an experience that cannot be taught, and I learned many valuable lessons in journalism that I would not otherwise have learnt, about the pratices of the local and national press, and especially the tabloids.