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| Mark Poepsel graduated from Mizzou in 2002 with a degree in broadcast journalism. After working as a general assignment reporter for several TV stations, he's now an assistant professor at Loyola University in New Orleans. |
If I’m writing a letter to myself as an undergraduate at Mizzou, I might not say the things about being savvy about converged technology or about learning computer programming or iOS/Droid app development that ONA might want me to say.
Instead, I’d say this: Get out of the house. Don’t take that weekend reporting shift. Go to a few parties and network because the people who are your friends today are your job contacts in the future. The only thing a purely academic life prepares you for is an academic life. This has worked out for “future you” pretty well, but it’s not the way to become the next great foreign correspondent or the next maker of Oscar-winning documentary films.
You got into the J-school because you’re smart, across the board smart – English, math, science, social sciences, etc. You can learn just about anything you spend two weeks on. I’m not worried about your tech skills, your ability to work on multiple platforms or your drive and passion for journalism.
I’d tell you to develop better people skills, so that those first jobs in tiny cities aren’t quite so miserable when it turns out no one else graduated Phi Beta Kappa, and they don’t really care that you do.
