I’ve finally come to realise that the path to career success post high school is not the walk up the slight incline that the fresh-faced journalism student believes it to be. It's more a snow capped mountain…only navigated through a complicated maze filled with hungry tigers.
You wade through the gross smelly mud that is high school curriculum (I’m still waiting to apply my knowledge of Lady Macbeth to an everyday situation .... still yet to come up at job interviews) to get to that pivotal life moment when you get that OP. You escape the disturbing number of potential public disturbance lawsuits in schoolies week. You finally navigate the emotional mine field that is university enrollment.
You do all this with a certain comfort, clutching desperately to this incredible image of what your university life will be like. In school we were constantly told it would be an easy curriculum filled with extensions for ridiculous reasons and unhealthy amounts of holidays, our parents told us about their university misadventures, blowing of the tutorials to go to the beach or have an all nighter out on the town. Because no matter what happens as long as you get pretty decent marks (or in the case of those in the “p’s get degrees" school of thought just get that piece of paper) your guaranteed the job in your dream industry.
Those lying bastards.
To be fairer maybe university was like that in the golden days? Maybe the sun tanned constantly hung over ladies man David De Witt of my high school dreams would exist (enter sleep deprived, pasty, coffee stained David De Witt of today’s reality). But the reality is jobs are a whole new fight, getting one is a little more complicated than showing up at ABC and handing your academic transcript to the boss on your way to the news desk. It all comes back not to the old saying (I assume it's old anyway…),
“It's not what you know it's WHO you know.”
In the context of journalism especially, taking into consideration the severely threatened business model and consequential budget cuts especially to the intake of new graduates it became pretty clear early that marks pretty much mean nothing – it’s your work experience – the contacts you build, reputation you spread and the skills you’ve already developed that make your application that extra degree more seductive than that of the straight seven students.
That makes sense to a certain extent…I’m a pretty strong believer that marks and OP’s can’t truly reflect a persons intelligence or proficiency in doing a job – here those with the drive to work in the profession and who put in the most time get the jobs which is all well and good.
But this Online Journalism has opened my eyes to just how complicated snatching that dream journalism job (or any other job in near future) now is…now not only are we expected to juggle study, work, family and friends, working for FREE in work experience blocks and in my case my sacred duty to the ladies of Brisbane to make some valley appearances, but NOW it's almost imperative to be establishing online presence – to be blogging creatively to get noticed, we must be joining Twitter and other social networking sites to meet people in the industry and to promote our stories to gain followings.
When is the part where the tropical music plays as we sip beers on the beach and alternate between talking about our fancy new journalism jobs and chuckling at the idea of actually going to our classes? SEE HERE FOR SEMI-ACCURATE DEPICTION OF EXPECTATIONS OF UNIVERSITY.
The introduction of the net has led to great opportunities to social network and to show of our style’s of writing but from a different perspective it's really put more expectation on us to have all these things in order…to be preparing our career RIGHT NOW. Because according to this weeks lecturer Nikki Parkinson today’s prospective employers wont’ be just looking at CV’s but instead Googling job applicants and reading their blogs.
(Just literally stopped typing to delete my MySpace account…don’t need the employers seeing those particular Schoolies photos….)
For good tips on creating an online presence see this article from Poynter Institute writer Judy Stark (past the disturbing apocalyptic talk about the inevitability of losing ones job).
Are these growing expectations depriving us (uni students) of the university lifestyle we were promised or just granting us more opportunities?
The one thing this tells us pretty clearly is that university is no longer the primary means to the end that is living the Clark Kent Daily Planet dream (minus cape unless your editor is pretty cool). Jobs aren’t going to the strongest academic or the person with the most work experience but to the best social networkers…off to start taking down the incriminating drinking photos.
And more importantly this:
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