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Going back to school?

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by SixToe, Dec 10, 2009.

  1. J-School Blue

    J-School Blue Member

    Yeah, my fear of entering Yet Another Dying Profession is the one thing that makes me hesitate (I have no wish to work for a school library. Dream is to get on the government dime).

    I've also been sniffing around media programs that're more tilted toward film and audio. My one regret about my j-school days is that I didn't take more classes in the techy end of this mess.
     
  2. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    Schools will always need someone to manage books/media. You cannot think it will only be books and Dewey Decimals.
     
  3. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    I'm not sure that they will. Who needs to manage media when everything's online? They'll certainly need fewer, at the least.
     
  4. Birdscribe

    Birdscribe Active Member

    Yes... and no.

    If you can get into a private university -- and you've got experience in the field -- you can get a class. I taught for six years at a small, Division III private school in the LA 'burbs and was treated very well.

    There are two catches, however:

    1) You won't make dick. I made $530 a month for one class, which is one big reason I quit after the spring of 2008. I was spending $700 a month in gas -- remember, gas in SoCal was $4.65 a gallon.

    2) You need contacts to get in. I got tipped by the city editor at my last job. He had an offer and turned it down. I heard about it, asked and was put in touch with, first, one of the other profs, then the chair of the department.

    That said, tstumpf, you're generally right. I applied at one of the Cal States for one of the half-dozen journalism jobs they had open. I had 17 years of experience in the field at (at that time) four years of university teaching experience. You'd think I'd be a perfect candidate.

    Yet I got one of those hearty thanks-but-no-thanks letters, saying they "couldn't offer me a position." When I called the chair of the dept., he never returned my calls. But I'm guessing it's because I was lacking that MA.

    Which illustrates the idiocy of university/college J-schools, that they'd rather hire someone fresh out of a grad program instead of someone who had worked in the field.
     
  5. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    Who better to overvalue the importance of academics than an academic? It's a self-perpetuating system.
     
  6. spud

    spud Member

    It's similar to fraternity hazing, if I can be permitted to make a crude comparison. "I did it, so you have to do it." Nobody stops to ask "wait, why the fuck are we doing this again?" It's just done, almost out of spite.

    It's done in the name of education of course, but the idea that you can learn those same principles in real life is ignored.
     
  7. sgreenwell

    sgreenwell Well-Known Member

    I'm at a crossroads with this issue too. I've been trying to get a secretarial / data entry job at the university I graduated from. First, it would pay more money and provide more stable hours than my current job, but also, you get a significant discount on any course you take, and eventually, a complete tuition waiver. Since most of my gen eds from my journalism degree would apply toward an education / teaching degree, I was hoping I'd be able to finish that up in a year or two, and then reevaluate where I am and what I want to do.
     
  8. golfnut8924

    golfnut8924 Guest

    Both of my parents are librarians so I can sound off a little bit on that topic...

    My dad works at a library in a VA hospital so his situation is a little different. But my mom works at a public county library and has done so for the last 30 years or so. She says that about 80% of the people who come through the doors today are just there to use the internet, nothing more. She gets delighted when she actually gets to check out a book to someone because it seems as if nobody does that anymore.

    Book? What the hell is a book? I'm just going to read about it online.

    She cautioned me about following her footsteps because she's quite uncertain about the future of libraries. All the libraries in her county have had wage freezes and hiring freezes for several years now (sound familiar newspaper people?). Libraries are ordering fewer books now than they were even 10 years ago because the demand for them just isn't there anymore.

    The same thing that has contributed to the killing of newspapers (internet) is doing the same to libraries.
     
  9. WriteThinking

    WriteThinking Well-Known Member

    People in journalism, and a lot of other "real world jobs," too, tend to see the job as better in terms of learning/teaching than college.

    But it's not a matter of either being better than the other. They are just different, and valuable in different ways and for different reasons.

    College isn't necessarily meant to teach you how, exactly, it's going to be in the "real world." It can't, because, by its somewhat cloistered, still-protective (of students) nature, it's different than the real world. What college does do, or should, is to teach people to open their minds, to think, to question, to consider, to embrace, to decide, etc...regarding all things, to whatever extent a person decides is desirable or possible or prudent, etc. for them. It's about learning personal ideals and setting personal agendas and boundaries for oneself, and learning to deal with those of others.

    The real world job is, on the other hand, for practical applications of specific practical skills and techniques, etc. that are an addendum to the more esoteric development that is supposed to occur, or, at least, be possible -- and I firmly believe that it is -- in college.

    For these reasons, I will never regret or denigrate either my BA, or the time I spent earning it.

    Like anything else, a college education and college life must be approached with the right mindset. Otherwise, the value in it is lost, or never seen.
     
  10. satchmo

    satchmo Member

    I'm about nine hours from entering a Masters in Computer Science program, and I'm discovering every day that there's not a lot of crossover between a BA in Journalism and anything these kids are studying. I have three friends who did the law school route and only one of them has a job with a firm. One hung up his own shingle and the other is clerking by day, sending out resumes by night.

    What's scary about switching horses is that as bad as our industry is, at least it's the devil we know. All I hear from my classmates (particularly the ones about to graduate) is how bad the tech industry is. Plus, it's hard. Like real hard. Every day I walk into class, I'm reminded of how easy Media Law and Ethics was.

    To be honest with you, I started making my change almost a year and a half ago because every day that I sit behind a desk -- missing birthdays, funerals, weddings, anniversaries and holidays -- I grow to hate the industry I used to love a little more. I started off wanting to be Grantland Rice and now, I'd settle for the ability to get off the desk and cover a road game every once in a while.
     
  11. Sneed

    Sneed Guest

    I agree wholeheartedly that real-world work experience teaches so much more than just going through a degree program. I lucked into landing a job as the sports editor for a nearby weekly my junior year in college (didn't sleep much those days), and was blown away with how much I learned just from actually working. I mean, I'd worked on the school newspaper, but it was nothing like true work experience.
     
  12. Birdscribe

    Birdscribe Active Member

    There are disciplines -- like the Humanities -- where scholarly work is important. No quibble there. In fact, Mrs. Birdscribe -- who has a Masters in History -- and I get into this argument all the time. And I tell her that in her field, they SHOULD have graduate experience.

    But when it comes to something like journalism or communications, who would you rather have talking to you for three hours a night: some PhD spouting theory or someone who had been-there, done-that, shared-the-stories?

    I used to get great evaluations from my students, who spread the word to take my class. At the university I taught at, Journalism 100 was a GE class, so I always had a captive audience. I always had a half-dozen or so trying to crash my class.

    There's no way I would have been as good a teacher if I didn't have that work experience. None. The stories I told in class about my experiences helped me immensely and it helped illustrate what I was teaching each week. I know the students got plenty out of it, because every semester, a comment or four about that would show up on the student evaluations.

    But as someone pointed out above, the ivory tower might as well be Fort Knox. And like you, tstumpf, I relished learning from those who have done rather than those who haven't. I had professors in college who had incredible levels of experience: press secretary to LA Mayor Tom Bradley (who was also city editor of a LA suburban paper when he was 24), director of corporate communications for Marriott, news director at two TV stations in New York, etc.

    Not surprisingly, these were my best profs in college. It wasn't a coincidence.
     
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