Lauren Wille

Every year when I go back home for the holidays, I’m always eager to tell my parents and relatives about how much fun I’m having at school and that I’m excited for my future career. This year when I went back, things were different. Instead of telling them how inspired I was, or how much I’ve learned, I was letting them know that my own teachers were telling my classmates and I that we’d be lucky to land a job in journalism. 

When addressing about 16 students one of them said, ” Only 3% of you will actually be journalists, or work the industry.” 

Coming from someone who’s supposed to be encouraging me to do the best I can, be the best I can, and get that job I wanted so much because I worked hard for it. I was so let down. 

Although the journalism industry isn’t doing so hot right now, that doesn’t mean that it never will again. It’s changing all the time, and all industries are doing bad right now. And no matter what the reason, it will get better, and either way there’s no reason to be scaring students into thinking they’ll never get a job. 

As mostly everyone knows, newspaper and magazine numbers are dropping, but that doesn’t scare me. I know that the reason this is happening is because the world is refusing to keep things old fashioned, and needs to be constantly updating itself. Picking up a newspaper or magazine is just too hard now. But Just because the times are changing, doesn’t mean I have to quit trying to be a print journalist. It just means that I have to change with the times and begin learning advanced technologies in new media.

Being a student at Columbia College Chicago, I feel like I have an upper-hand at accomplishing this. Classes here are designed to keep us on par with the journalism world, and has plenty of other students learning to use different media in a variety of majors, which is great for networking. Attending school here along with the fact that I’ve been using the internet just as long as I could multiply, makes me feel confident about graduating. Even if I don’t end up writing right away, I will have enough skill in other areas to do something else for awhile. If I ever am feeling scared, that’s what I try to tell myself.