Vasily Koloda)
Think back to January (which somehow feels like yesterday and nine centuries ago at the same time). It was a simpler time. Australia’s first COVID case had been confirmed in Victoria, and I think we’d all underestimated the virus’ determination to bring challenges and changes. Then, seemingly five minutes later, it’s September and I’m staring down the barrel of a(n almost) completed degree and a semi–successful transition to online education. I say ‘semi’ not because I’ve crashed and burned in the last semester of my degree , but because I honestly would give anything to be back on–campus (can the vaccine hurry up?).
And I know graduating in–and–of–itself is a big deal; it’ll make all the long nights, frantically adding referencing to essays an hour before they’re due and nights out worth it. Just do your referencing as you go, kids; I promise it’s worth it. It’s just hard to feel too enthused about graduating into an industry already struggling before the pandemic began. You shouldn’t have done a journalism degree if you wanted job security, the naysayers say … and in this, I sort of agree with you. Traditional journalism is on shaky ground, and its questionable if the industry has found a form that can survive into the future. It’s a trend exacerbated by the pandemic, to be sure, but we cannot pretend as though it was all roses in the journalism world beforehand.
I’ve made job alerts with LinkedIn and Indeed, where every ‘entry level job’ asks for ‘one to three years of experience.’ Turn on the news or open a newspaper (if you’re over thirty) and you’ll be hit with the latest job losses or a publication going under. I’ve heard stories of journos having meteoric rise to the topics and wondered if it could be me … before remembering the job market, even before the pandemic.
But right as journalism is changing, so am I. I’m finally teaching myself to cook, finally flossing my teeth regularly (don’t tell my dentist it took me until I was twenty to build the habit) and going for walks in the afternoon and trying to have a decent sleep schedule. I’m not denying that change (and COVID–19) is scary and confronting; they both are, and I would be a fool to deny that. But as graduation approaches, I think I would be a bigger fool to only focus on the bad. Only madness that way lies, with a side helping of making me feel down about everything else. After all, every single journo graduate is in the same boat as me (except maybe the one with the meteoric rise I mentioned earlier)!