('26) OR resident refining college list, journalism/sports media major, 3.7 GPA, $20k/yr

[Wjs1107]

I have a journalism degree but never went into journalism. However, I do make a living as a writer, editor and content strategist for a large company, and have always had a very stable and interesting (to me) career. As it turns out, my skill set is also decently lucrative. It helps to keep an open mind about what you can do as a writer or storyteller.

I now hire for my small team of writers and producers, and I’ve hired plenty of former journalists looking for better pay and job security. Some do well with the transition to corporate life and others struggle.

There are three skills I picked up in j-school (beyond grammar, spelling, and punctuation) that have served me well for decades:

1. Asking great questions. This comes from genuine curiosity, knowing how to make someone comfortable so they get past the “pat” answers all people give when being interviewed or questioned, and respecting your audience by asking the questions they would have. This is a very transferable skill that works for any kind of problem solving situation. Your ability to quickly build enough expertise to ask those smart questions is something j-school helps you learn.

2. Organizing information for clarity. Being able to take content and break it down so others can digest it and follow along. A journalist can see what details matter and what details aren’t important to the story. They seek out through lines, themes, concepts—they learn to use small details to convey big points. This also translates well in a variety of situations—in communications generally, but also in all kinds of roles that require communicating or convincing stakeholders or teams.

3. Adjusting for feedback and incorporating edits. J school teaches you not to be precious with your words. Being edited is a part of the experience and learning to accept feedback, and push back when you have a strong take, as well as learning to appreciate when to apply either is a skill set that some people never learn. Journalism school accelerates this flexible and nimble mindset.

If your passion is sports journalism, go for it. Sure, it’s a tough field. Sure, you will pay your dues as you work your way up. You’re young and you should go for it before you have the commitments like a mortgage or children to feed, etc. That said, the skills you gain can be deployed and adapted to a number of content-making careers that have tons of potential for lasting career success.

Also, agree with those who have said you don’t need a name brand j school. Just get some real experience wherever and whenever you can find it.

[aquapt]

I don’t think any field I listed - or journalism - is universally “bad” to go into. Some young people are thriving in all of these careers. (And @Mjkacmom , congrats to your daughter!)

At the risk of veering off-topic, I’ll answer the question, hopefully without writing a book.

I graduated from BU with a dual BS/BA in PT and psychology, in the late 80’s. Today, a clinical doctorate is needed to get the same license. Today’s starting salaries are only about 10% better than what I got paid back then, when adjusted for inflation, so the exploding cost of the necessary education (3 additional years of educational expenses, multiplied by the exponentially higher cost of each year in school, plus the opportunity cost of the three missed years of gainful professional employment) is not really paying off in earning power.

Nor is the investment in a more-sophisticated level of education really paying off in terms of a more sophisticated level of practice; if anything, the average patient receives a more “cookbook” approach to treatment than in the past, because the ever-intensifying demands for efficiency and productivity often preclude taking time for creative approaches, learning and cross-pollination in the workplace, and lengths-of-stay that allow going beyond the basics.

Much of the argument for the entry-level doctorate was around the assertion that PT should be an autonomous, direct-access profession, not requiring a doctor’s prescription. But now the DPT is standard and there are more gatekeepers than ever; not only do third party payers still require a doctor’s referral, but they also employ non-clinicians to second-guess, abbreviate, interrupt, or outright deny the treatment plan that an MD prescribed and the DPT developed. In my last job, I very nearly spent as much time begging for authorizations as I did treating. Patients would wait weeks for re-authorization, often after only 1-3 initial sessions, and then they’d be back to square one before I could see them again.

That’s before we even get to questions of temperament and cognitive style. It can still be a great profession for people who are suited to multitasking, snap decisions, and interacting with more than 20 patients a day. (The full-time productivity standard at my last job was 25/day.) Those people exist, and God bless them, but that’s not me. Today’s equivalent of me should stay in engineering school… not that quality of life in the tech workplace hasn’t deteriorated too.

This is why I don’t bring the subject up much; I just end up sounding like a Negative Nancy. I really just wanted to make the point that folks in many professions feel the same way as the veteran journalists who would warn this student off.