I'm still job hunting. Applications, thoughts about applications, or what I can do to make myself more diverse/skilled/practiced/whatever consume my brain everyday.
Some days it feels like the entire day was dedicated to worrying myself sick about finding a job. Other days I think about it for maybe 20 minutes like one to three times a day. Sometimes I cry because all I want to do is good work that matters to someone and I don't have the resources or platform.
But then I find the "perfect" job or internship and get excited about applying again. I am part of a visual journalists group on Facebook that I was added to after meeting photographers at AAJA. They post jobs and internships and this is where I found an NPR internship for the visuals team as a photo editor. Doesn't that sound like the perfect job?
It's an amazing opportunity to learn from the people who are helping to mold the next generation of journalists - me! How? Sure we listen to NPR, grew up on it. But in school we studied it. In my own life, I studied public radio the most in my Ethics of Mass Media class. Listening to "All Things Considered" or "This American Life" and then weighing in on the ethics of the topic of their stories, or how we would have approached reporting, a retraction, etc. differently. I researched the ethics of publishing extraordinary photographs and cited an "All Things Considered" broadcast about the ethics of photojournalism. These are the people we are modeling ourselves after. Learning what to do and what not to do by their example. It's a big deal internship.
So thinking about jobs 24/7 has me on a rollercoaster thinking, do I just take any job in the field of journalism that comes my way? At what point will I have been out of school too long to be considered for jobs, but still have no "professional" line on my resume? I still refuse to settle. I am not so desperate yet, and I am extremely fortunate that I have this luxury, that I am ready/willing to wait tables to fill my time or put food on the table.
So I am blind with stubbornness and wading through the endless callings for PR assistants and social media interns, feeling my way towards that journalism job.