If you graduate from a top-notch school, is it easy to get a feature job?

Fuck Missouri. Not All --- But Almost every person I've known who graduated there is a pompous jackass who for some reason thinks they're more talented, more intellectual and generally just a better fucking person all the way around than anyone else. I don't know what it is about that fucking place but they can go to hell. Fuck them and their damn J-school. They ain't that fucking special.

 

I've had similar experiences.

Northwestern grads have always impressed, though.

 

Doc, Rip, I think the same can be said for most all J-schools. There's pompous jackasses from each one, whether it's Mizzou, Florida, Columbia, Northwestern, the Cal schools -- whatever. I certainly don't think of myself as better -- or special -- because I graduated from Mizzou. Nor do any of the other three guys I worked with who graduated from Mizzou, one who's an SE, one who's an AutoCAD editor, one who's a lawyer.

Sorry your mileage has varied.

 

I've known a couple good guys from Mizzou. The other 40 or so were all pieces of shit. Gives the school a real shitty image. Fuck 'em.

 

I've never looked down upon graduates of Missouri or other "prestigious" journalism schools (unless they've been the pompous jackasses described above), but neither have I treated them as anything special because of their academic background. And it shouldn't really matter where you went to school. Some of the most talented people I've worked with went to small liberal-arts colleges such as Augustana, Coe and Wabash without taking a single journalism class. I've also worked with grads of highly rated journalism schools who floundered in the workplace and couldn't hold a job.

 

The fact that I'm a pompous jackass has nothing to do with the fact that I graduated from a good J-school.

 

I've worked with several Mizzou grads. All good people.

 

That's so academicist!

I love all college grads. Unless they went to The Ohio State.

 

Or Texas.

 

Goes without saying.

 

Worked with a Northwestern grad at my first daily. She was quite proud of it, but I reminded her that I, a state school grad, was making 25 cents more per hour than she was ($7.75 v $7.50 in 1986).

She's a college professor now and I'm still a journalist, so I guess it worked out ok for her.