Journalism Career Fair

On Monday, October 20, I attended the Journalism Career Fair in the Stamp Ballroom. There, I experienced what it is really like to try to network with future employers, compete for internships and practice the daunting task of applying for employment.

Because I am not looking for employment as of right now, I thought I would begin my career fair adventure at the DC Internships stand. I am very interested in working for a publication this summer and gaining work experience to build my resume and broaden my journalistic network. However, the program that this company had to offer was quite different than what I had hoped for: instead of working for a professional company as an intern, I would be required to take classes (specifically economics) and not necessarily gain the hands-on experience of a true journalist because of this. I will still probably look into this as an option for a summer internship, however, I am not necessarily interested in this specific program.

I talked to a few broadcast stations afterward, and to no surprise, they wanted nothing to do with any freshman who isn't even enrolled in the journalism school yet. I find this extremely frustrating because as young journalists, we all need to start our resume building somewhere. As a result of this reluctance to accept young students into internship/career opportunities, I left the career fair with several business cards as well as the many copies of my resumé that few companies were interested in taking.