Only six weeks into a job at a fancy deli on Queen Anne and eight weeks into living in Seattle, I’m calling my boss and quitting via voice mail. I’ve delved so far into the negatives of my bank account since graduating that, after a $450 paycheck, I’m still well below zero dollars.
Charles Mudede is right—college is a utopia. For half a decade, you are part of a sheltered society where your ideas and hard work are rewarded with grades, free gym memberships, transportation, and beer pong, but all that’s left when you get out of college is… you. Alone in the world. And boy, how fucked you are. I was going to take my hard-earned, shiny new journalism degree and fight the war of words. I stupidly thought it would be easy. After all, the editor of my student newspaper really liked me, and I have a letter of recommendation from a White House reporter for the Washington Post. But I’ve spent the four months since graduating shoveling pasta salads to Queen Anne yuppies whose idea of journalism is TMZ. I landed an internship at The Stranger, yes, but it pays $0. I’m poorer than I’ve ever been, my internship is ending, and I don’t have any steady work in my field lined up.
I don’t remember anyone in college telling me it was going to be this way. Knowing what I do now about what life is like after college, here are the things I wish someone would have told me while I was still in college:
Don’t waste time. Get an internship in the field you want to work in. The smartest people out there start doing what they want to do without permission from anyone else.
Be smart about what school you pick. Despite everything you know about higher education, vocational schools are for the smartest people. English majors do not make money after school—engineers, welders, and nurses do. (And yes, life is ALL ABOUT MONEY. You’ll see this more clearly when you leave college and have none.)
Start saving. You’ll need it later.
Don’t get too set on anything. There’s no shame in reevaluating your life. I, for one, am planning on working for the US Forest Service. It has benefits, and I won’t feel like I’ve given up if I’m working for America. Go, America! 
Journalism is a poor career choice in the 21st century.
hint:
If you apply for any real Journalism jobs don’t mention your internshit at The Stranger.
You forgot the subheading under “be smart about what school you pick.” One needs to be just as wise with their major.
This. I’m older now, and I’ve had 4 major career changes, and am about to embark on a 5th. What you chose to do with your life and career at age 20 isn’t set in stone. It can change over time, and there is nothing wrong with that.
I graduated from the UW with three majors (art history, cinema studies, and speech communications). Sure, I could have interesting conversations with a variety of people, but I was ill-equipped to enter the corporate workplace with mere soft skills and no specific trade or program knowledge. I was able to get by for a few years “building a career” in marketing, but realized that companies were behind the curve in optimization and digital advertising, which was something I’d learned entering the marketing field at the time that I did. So I started my own agency. This was 2004, and as a niche, web-based business I was very busy, though mostly on contract with small local companies and startups. And, as many contractors will tell you, working from home isn’t as glamorous or free as it sounds — in fact, it’s downright depressing, particularly through a depression.
After 6 years on my own I reluctantly made the decision to re-enter the corporate workplace, but have since realized that trading flexibility and billable hours for security, stability and benefits will be best for me and my future family. My future husband, a journalism-school dropout (he hated the acct exec types) who now keeps busy as an Art Director/gig poster designer/music writer is able to contract doing what he loves because I’m now running global strategy for social and digital marketing at a large B2B company. The stability we have far outweighs the glamour of being a pajama-clad sole-proprietor.
Moral of the story? Meet as many people as you can (my personal network saved me on more than one occasion when “budgets ran out” or a contract dropped out from under me), and be sure to learn a trade or specific programs. Learn RoR, Drupal and other dev languages. Baby boomers are retiring by the thousands every day – healthcare will be stable, as will web jobs IF you can stay ahead of the curve.
And don’t believe what people tell you. Journalism is a fantastic degree to have, even if you don’t use it professionally.
Most everyone I graduated with got a job through connections and references. So make friends.
As someone who worked full time while going to night school, my sympathy for you is limited.
Another journalism student/hopeful exploited by a newspaper that believes intern labor should be free. And so the market sets its own price for “journalism”… nothing.
Real journalism skills — meaning critical thinking, research, developing relationships and contacts, collating information, writing clearly and concisely (you know, all the stuff you didn’t learn at The Stranger) — are invaluable in any field.
I majored in journalism and now work in high tech — along with one guy who majored in philosophy and another who went to Berklee College of Music. I don’t have figures, but a larger percentage of people work in fields unrelated to their college major (by choice, but just those forced to by the current economy).
College is not a trade school, and some of us aren’t cut out to be accountants or civil engineers.
The only real point of college is to make friends and contacts that will help you gat a job later. Socialize and avoid an Internet only degree at all costs.
Well this article just depressed me, as I graduated college having basically done none of that