Why I Never Pursued Journalism After College
Even though I have a journalism degree
If you grew up in the 2000s, being a journalist looked pretty damn cool. I loved reading fashion magazines and I looked forward to getting my new issues of Seventeen and Teen Vogue in the mail each month. A lot of my favorite movies in high school-mostly rom-coms like How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days featured female protagonists writing for magazines or newspapers in New York City.
So I was gonna do the same. I started college in 2009 at a local state university in North Dakota where I’m from, with the goal of eventually moving to NYC to write for Vogue. But by the time I graduated with my journalism degree in 2013, the industry had kind of gone to shit.
A lot had changed in those four years. Print media was close to becoming irrelevant, while Instagram was starting to take off. News reporters seemed to be working more and more hours for less and less pay, if they even still had jobs. And what used to be my dream career was starting to look pretty depressing.
As much as I loved to write, the thought of working for a traditional media outlet no longer appealed to me. I left the industry for good after completing an unpaid internship at my hometown’s local newspaper during my senior year of college.