The beginning of my life as a big kid

Throughout my college career I was successful, well for the most part. I had my challenges with school, and trying to make the right decisions that were best for my career as a journalist. I feel like I went through what a lot of college students go through, growth, change and trying to find what was best for me and the education I wanted.

I've know that I wanted to be involved in the television news industry for a long time, I'd say back to freshman year of high school. Since that moment in high school when I realized that being a television reporter was my dream I have taken, what I think were the correct steps in order to make that dream a reality. I went to a four year college with a great school of journalism, I succeeded and excelled in my classes and tried to gain the most from every internship and experience involving news reporting. Then came graduation. I suddenly found myself at a place where I wasn't quite sure what was next. All my life I had been planning, making the next move to become a journalist, and suddenly I was done with school and reality came rushing towards me. It was now time to put my schooling, work and internship experiences towards a career. I became overwhelmed. Asking myself where do I begin? I knew the task of finding a job wouldn't be easy but I was not prepared for what lay ahead.

No one can really prepare you for the day following graduation. The day you hang up your cap and gown and place your tassel on a hook or toss it aside somewhere. No one tells you that in just 24hrs you go from college student to unemployed. Well, at least that was the case for me. Of course it's well known that you try and get a job after college, I mean isn't that what I went to college for was to try and up my chances of being employed. I had been job hunting for a solid month prior to graduation I had applied to at least 5-10 jobs. The thing about television is that even if you found a job the station usually needs you within two weeks, so looking for a job farther out than that wasn't possible. I was also still so occupied with school and making sure that I would graduate that getting a job was important but had been pushed aside in my mind. Then after graduation day I found myself unemployed. I panicked slightly and then tired to tell myself that I would find a job.

My summer started to roll by faster than expected. I was sending out what seemed like hundreds of demo tapes, cover letters and resumes. I felt like a machine punching out the necessary components needed to get a job. In those first few weeks I had no idea that was only the beginning.