Career In Journalism

A great many people who want to be writers say that they want to have a career in journalism.  They may envision themselves going to exotic locales to cover stories. While these things do happen to journalists it takes a long time to make your bones before you are sent on any interesting assignments.   I became a journalist purely by accident.  Unlike others who seek out journalism as a career I wanted to be a writer.  I envisioned myself writing books of fiction and entertaining the masses.  My parents talked me into going to college and getting a degree in journalism.  They told me that it was a good idea to have something to fall back on in case I couldn’t make a living writing fiction for a living.  Five years and 100 rejections later I realized they were right. Fortunately my degree in journalism helped me support myself so that I didn’t have to go back home after I got out of school.   I had no idea what a journalist did until I got my first job at a local paper when I was still in school.  I was hired as a stringer and had to report on meetings.  It was boring but it paid for extras.  Someone said that I was a journalist and I realised that I was working in a field for which I was studying.