WASHINGTON –Over the past year, I have had far too many conversations that resemble the following:

PERSON I JUST MET: “So, what do you do?”

ME: “I’m working on getting my Master’s from Northwestern.”

PIJM: “Oh, that’s great! What are you getting your degree in?”

ME: “Broadcast journalism, actually.”

PIJM: “Oh, really?” (possibly insert slight chuckle here) “I hear the job market isn’t so great for that…”

Besides the blatant rudeness of these types of comments (and trust me, I get them a lot) and the fact that the job market doesn’t seem to be great for most industries, I beg to differ.

Now after 12 months of running around the streets of Chicago and D.C., staying up into the wee hours of the morning and occasionally shedding a few tears, I’m staring the big, bad job market in the face.

You don’t scare me.

Day after day, I’ve been told all about how “the world of journalism is changing”—and it is. As a young journalist, I’ll be expected to do just about everything: video, audio, text, Twitter. But there’s good news. I am perfectly able to do that.

Medill, at least (and I believe many news organizations), understands the direction my colleagues and I are headed and has prepared us to be multimedia journalists.

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t profess that I’ll be rolling in dough with a prestigious 10 p.m. anchor job in Washington, D.C. in a month. Far from it. I don’t think anyone gets into journalism for the money or the luxury or the location.

But there are jobs out there. I have a spreadsheet on my computer with 100 television and online video jobs that have been posted within the past month or so. Granted, they could take me anywhere in the country—I’d have to decide if I’d be willing to live in, say, Alpena, Mich. But that’s part of the fun of the job!

My plan is to send out these piles and piles of resumes and DVDs and pray that one out of the 100 will like me enough to give me a shot.

And hey, there’s always waitressing.

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