Briana Provost

Professor Henry

Journalism 200

20 October 2014

Reflection on the Career Fair

                One of the first things that comes to a girls’ mind when they are told they have to dress up for an event they think: What am I going to wear? So all dolled up in my dress pants and blazer I marched to the career fair. I was unable to attend the first career fair so I really didn’t know what to expect from the journalism career fair. I remembered that students had shared before in class that their name tags had said that they were freshman connection. I was happy to say that everyone’s name tags were the same and that I at least didn’t physically have anything on me that said I was a freshman. The room set-up was simple. Along the four walls of the ballroom were all of these different tables that were there representing a different news company. If you wanted to interview with that news company for an internship or a job, then you would get in line to go talk to the people from that news group and sit in, what I called, the “hot seat.”

Being a freshman has its ups and downs. Walking into the career fair, I thought that there would be many opportunities for students of all grade levels, but many were just looking for upperclassmen. However, a part of me was glad that they weren’t looking for freshman just yet because there wasn’t much pressure for me to get that internship. Naturally I wanted to make a good impression, but I knew that my future didn’t necessarily depend on this career fair considering none of the news companies wanted to hire me anyways. Looking around the room, there were many juniors and seniors fidgeting because they were on-deck for the hot seat. I, however, seemed to be one of the lucky ones that didn’t come down with the case of the nerves.

I only went to two tables at the career fair because I had a limited amount of time before I had to get to class. The first table I went to was the Washington Internships table. D.C. Internships is a company that places journalists in different internships for a summer in Washington D.C. The people who were talking to students at their booth were really friendly and they were really welcoming to freshman. I need to work back home this summer so I wouldn’t be able to apply for this upcoming summer, but D.C. Internships will be a good opportunity to keep in mind for the summer or my sophomore or junior year. The second table that I visited was the Baltimore Business Journal. The people they had behind their table weren’t as talkative and it challenged me to talk more to them. Their paper also focuses heavily on the economy, and I am not so sure those are articles are the type of articles that I would want to write. However, they were one of the few tables there that were a newspaper, and it was a really good practice for interviews were employers expect you to talk without many questions of you.

              I was a little disappointed to find that most of the tables were only for broadcast journalism majors. I intend to major in multiplatform journalism and so I was hoping that there would be more papers and magazines there than there were, but attending the career fair was still an interesting experience none the less. Practicing speaking to two very different types of potential interviewers was very beneficial. This experience taught me that I need to be prepared for both every potential question that could be asked and be prepared to talk in the case in which no questions are asked at all. I also would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the snack table that they had laid out in the middle of the room. I am glad that I attended the career fair to get a taste of my future and get a glimpse of what I will have to do in the future.