Congrats on Graduating, Now Where are You Going?

It comes up a lot at the end of the semester – internship search, job search, what do I do now?

With so many of my students coming form the metro Atlanta area, they plan on closing out their Athens life and heading back to the suburbs to start anew. Which is a great plan if you’re heading into a career with lots of job opportunities. But in journalism? Well, there aren’t quite so many.

So I tell them to look for a job at first, not a geographic location. Find a place where you can hone your craft, learn your lessons and grow. Then, with a few lines on your resume beyond the student paper, you can start thinking about where you want to live.

It’s the advice I got, it’s the advice most of my peers got. But now it’s not just the young’uns who are taking that advice – and some older folks are taking it much, much further. Like, out of the country further. Which, to be honest, I think is great.

Go find a place to work, then make it your home. Later, find a place to be your home, then make it a place to work. Right out of school, you still don’t know who you are – so how are you supposed to know where you are?