To those that passed along comments on this to me, thank you.
It's the second time I'm going through this with the same paper. In 2008, when they were threatening to close the paper, I took the buyout offer, thinking in the words of the Steve Miller Band that I'd "take the money and run". Instead of accepting an offer to return part-time, like a handful of co-workers did, I opted to try reinventing myself as a paralegal. Breezed through an ABA-approved program with a 4.0, got hired seven months before graduating and then fired three months after graduating. That was March 2011.
By September 2011, I still hadn't found work and returned to the paper as a part-time copy editor. Since then I have still been unable to find full-time work as a copy editor or a beginner legal assistant/paralegal.
Last spring went back to school (again) for medical billing & coding. Finished up the coursework for the program last month, am on externship now (which ends next week), passed the prestigious CPC certification exam on the first try, and am now looking for work in that field. The news that my income from the paper stops Sept. 7 just means I now have a deadline to get a job in medical billing/coding.
My thinking is that the editing (and reporting) skills -- strong communications, attention to detail, organization, analytic thinking, etc. -- lend themselves perfectly to the billing and coding field, which is supposed to be a growing field.
