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Why I shouldn’t have worried so much about finding a job

Reflections on Mindy McAdams’ post on how j-school grads don’t get it.

As a prospective student looking at Kent State I attended a scholarship competition that included a luncheon with a member of the faculty. I enthusiastically told him I was interested in online journalism. Even today I remember his response as if it came 10 seconds ago, “If you want to write for the Web, you should do the electronic media track, radio.” I scoffed and told my mother as we drove home that afternoon that he was crazy.

Four years later, that’s probably the best advice I ever ignored. It came from a professor who went on to be one of my mentors, though I doubt he remembers ever saying it, and in hindsight I’m sure he, too, is glad I didn’t take it. I wouldn’t be half the journalist I am today if I had.

Still, any of my friends or professors can tell you that last fall I preceded just about every discussion of my pending graduation with the caveat, “If I find a job…”

It’s not that I wasn’t prepared. (See my previous post.) I was. More than prepared. Willing to do anything in journalism. Willing to move anywhere. Willing to learn anything an editor asked me to. My resume was solid; short of a major metro internship, I don’t know how I could have improved it. I knew HTML and CSS and could shoot photos and edit video. My Photoshop skills rivaled and in many ways surpassed my photo-j peers. I was implementing convergence in the newsroom I presided over. To top it off, I was a reporter with solid writing and editing skills, as well as interviewing and research adeptness. There was only one skill I left j-school wishing I’d had time to learn better and that was Flash, and even there I knew more than most.

But I’m from Akron, where the newspaper I grew up reading and loving was sold, bought and sold again this year before having a fourth of its newsroom gutted. Plus, let’s admit it, reading Romenesko is depressing. Not only was I entering a competitive job market in a field undergoing a transformation, but also every day it seemed I would be competing with a dozen or more newly unemployed people who had the one thing I didn’t: experience. The odds seemed stacked against me.

Then I had a breakthrough. In November I went to a job fair. I attended discussions where I heard what my j-school counterparts were (or in many cases weren’t) learning. I interviewed with editor after editor, each receptive to my skills and ideas. They, several of whom I had contact with since, saw the potential that even I didn’t. They helped me realize what I couldn’t have known without talking to editors actually in the field: I got it. Apparently, too many of my peers didn’t. I was the prototypical new j-school grad, or as one editor later told me after a job interview, “the most prepared recent graduate for today’s job market” he’d ever seen.

That confidence helped carry me through the final month of school with minimal “if I find a job” talk. It also helped me score several interviews and land my once unfathomable first job before my degree was even two weeks old.

I don’t know where the students McAdams discusses are coming from, but I do know it’s not from my school. Because even the professor who once looked at Web journalism as a novelty, easily pushed to the side of the curriculum, has come around. He, too, gets it.

I agree with everything she says students need to learn. But I realize what many of those students don’t: even with a degree and a job, I still have so much learning to do. That’s what makes the future exciting.

Other things worth reading: What Rob Curley, whose speech at KSU last spring probably sealed the deal on online journalism for me, thinks students should know (also his thoughts here).

2 Responses to “Why I shouldn’t have worried so much about finding a job”

  1. Mindy McAdams Says:

    Nice post, Meranda! Those unprepared j-school grads are coming from ALL OVER. As you yourself wrote:

    “I heard what my j-school counterparts were (or in many cases weren’t) learning. I interviewed with editor after editor, each receptive to my skills and ideas…. They helped me realize what I couldn’t have known without talking to editors actually in the field: I got it. Apparently, too many of my peers didn’t.”

    Too many of your peers DON’T get it. But that is nothing but a HUGE ADVANTAGE for new journalists such as you, who do.

  2. Innovation in College Media » Blog Archive » Students ‘getting it’ Says:

    […] And Meranda Watling – “Why I shouldn’t have worried so much about finding a job”: Then I had a breakthrough. In November I went to a job fair. I attended discussions where I heard what my j-school counterparts were (or in many cases weren’t) learning. I interviewed with editor after editor, each receptive to my skills and ideas. They, several of whom I had contact with since, saw the potential that even I didn’t. They helped me realize what I couldn’t have known without talking to editors actually in the field: I got it. Apparently, too many of my peers didn’t. I was the prototypical new j-school grad, or as one editor later told me after a job interview, “the most prepared recent graduate for today’s job market” he’d ever seen. […]