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| Matt Pearce is a freelance writer for the Los Angeles Times, the Pitch and The New Inquiry. He received a master's degree from the Missouri School of Journalism in 2011. |
Dear students:
The most important thing you should know at this point in your career is that it’s OK if you don’t grow up to be a journalist.
I realize that your student loans are probably about to drown you and you’re thinking I already put in, like, all this work. I’m actually not trying to dissuade you! Being a journalist is a very fine and fun thing to be. I’m having the time of my life, and I’d be the first in line to encourage you and tell you that you’re gonna have a great career and so many stories to tell at the bar.
But because your teachers probably won’t say it to you, I’ll say it to you: If it ever stops being fun, if you ever start dreading going to work, if you start going hungry because they won’t pay you enough to do something you stopped loving to do anyway, then for the love of god just quit. If I wake up one morning and they tell me that journalism is sitting behind a desk for 10 hours a day and trying not to accidentally plagiarize something from the million blogs I’m supposed to aggregate, then I’m leaving journalism and moving to New Orleans to open a coffee shop. May the bridges I burn light the way.
