I recently discovered that my grandfather and I had more than our names in common. He too desperately wanted to be a journalist. For a brief period of his life he managed to get published in a local paper in Ensenada, Mexico. His love was sports coverage.
In one of her recent visits, my grandmother brought some of my grandpa’s old newspaper clippings. It was strange to see my name printed on a piece of yellowish, decaying newspaper, but it was exciting, nonetheless.
I felt as though I’d been writing for decades and my work was that of an old intellectual type. Then I realized that sometimes I forget how to spell the word “definitely” and that I am way far from being any type of intellectual anything.
I also got to thinking about my grandfather and his failed journalism career; how he had to leave behind his dreams of writing in order to raise my father and his four sisters and brother. He essentially had to abandon his true dreams to pay the rent.
That was back in Mexico, though, where possibilities can sometimes be cut short. It’s not like what’s happening in this country, where possibilities are endless. Oh, wait, they’re kinda not.
With the current economic paranoia we’re all experiencing, working the dream job after college is becoming, well, a questionable dream. Are we spending all these hours studying and drinking way too much caffeine for nothing? Will there be any jobs for the current generation of college students? To tell the truth, I have no answers. But I have my friend’s laptop and this is what I found online:
The New York Times actually suggests that high school seniors take a year off. In a recent article, business reporter Jonathan D. Glader brings up President Barack Obama’s recent proposal to beef up federal financial aid. Glader points out that, if in fact these proposals become a reality, benefits will be available for students until July 2010.
If students delay college, maybe the economy will get better and there will be jobs waiting for them once they graduate. The reporter points out that jobs are scarce and the current economic situation could take a turn for the worse. For the time being students and their parents can save some dough by waiting until the following year to take advantage of the alleged new-and-improved financial aid.
What about current college students you ask? According to the Salt Lake Tribune, college students graduating this spring will face an 8 percent unemployment rate. College graduates with degrees in environmental science and biotech need not worry. The article proclaims that graduates with these types of degrees will be more likely to find jobs.
The Chicago Tribune reports that an estimated 1.5 million students will be graduating this spring. A recent survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers reports that employers “planned to hire nearly 22 percent fewer college graduates than they did from the Class of 2008.”
Philip Gardner, director of Michigan State University’s Collegiate Employment Research Institute gives a few words of encouragement. Although he confirms our fears that the marketplace is going to get even worse, he urges college graduates to be “resilient” and to “keep your sights on where you want to go.”
Easy for him to say; he already has a job. He’s got a point though. After reading a couple of more depressing articles that pretty much said the same thing, I couldn’t help but think about something one journalism professor said when I started at Cal State Long Beach. With a dead serious face, he said that if we had chosen this field for the money, we were in the wrong business.
I’m sticking to journalism because I truly have passion for the damn field. I just hope that the rest of the student population doesn’t get discouraged when they don’t land that huge corporate gig after they graduate. Or whatever.
-Julio Salgado