Got a job, but I need your help

Two points I think that are worth repeating, just for emphasis.

1. Double major. When I'm done with my master's I'll have two degrees in journalism, and as I watch the students I TA get ready to graduate and get jobs, I desperately wish my undergrad had been in something (anything) else.

2. The weekly is not taking a chance. That job is ALWAYS there. It's safe. There will never NOT be that opportunity. Oh, it may not be at that paper, but it will always be an option. Trust that coming from someone who started at a tiny weekly fresh out of college.

College isn't just about the degree at the end. It's about all the life-altering experiences you have there. Go away, go to school, meet new people and expand your world.

 

I think Idaho has the right idea. If you want to be a journalist and you have the opportunity to write, take it. But absolutely, positively find a way to go to school. Your first job out of high school, it will push you some, but once you learn to manage your time, the weekly newspaper job will not present a burden that will prevent you from going to school. When I was 18, $25,000 looked like a lot of money to me. Take that money and use it for your education (and by all means, that education will include consumption of beverages) while you have no family to support. If you can find a college nearby, this job can really be a serious head start for you. One tip: If they have an employee-contribution retirement plan, sock all the money in it they'll let you.

 

Untake the job. Go to college. In the name of all that is holy.
Then have fun. Drink a lot. Go to a school w/a daily paper or big-time sports. Study something besides journalism but read and write your ass off.
And in four years you'll have lifelong friends, a degree that can help you when this industry finally kicks it and better prospects than a crappy weekly gig in the outer sticks.

 

When did 25K not become any sort of decent salary at all? I was making 21K at my first DAILY and I was fine with living expenses.

 

Depends on where you live, 'pup.

I was making 23K at my first daily, and subsisting on a diet of Top Ramen, turkey sandwiches and tap water.

(Of course, now my diet is cereal, good turkey sandwiches and bottled water. But that's by choice, not by necessity.)

 

Fixed that.

 

that's an awful salary. go to school.

 

The same can be said about living and working on your own after high school, assuming you've had that experience.

 

That's true. I guess I'm going on the fact that I live in the mid-south and for some dailies around here, they pay 25k and people live pretty comfortably. In fact, when I was news director for a radio station, I was only making 25k.

 

You can live comfortably on 25k (what's that come to in Canadian by the way) if you have a spouse who makes that much or more. Presumably he doesn't have a lot of fnancial obligations. If all I had to pay was rent, utilities and maybe a car payment, and I'm only feeding myself, 25 would be enough to live on and go to school. Start collecting credit cards and having auto incidents that drive up your insurance premiums, and things get much more dicey.

 

After two years, I got my degree, completing a decade-long odyssey of medicority, procrastination and masturbating fantasizing about the girls in my classes.
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i'm confused. how did you find the time to spank it to the memory of amy during all this?

 

I lived on $800/month (pre-tax!) in Atlanta while interning for a year after college. So I realize that it's physically possible to live on $25K when you're 18. It's also physically possible to blow Barbaro. That doesn't make it a good idea.

If you want to live anywhere other than Calcutta, a salary of $25K (to paraphrase the great Buford T. Justice) is baby shit -- especially when you're passing up college and condemning yourself to annual 5 percent raises (if you're lucky). And the older you get, the less fun it is to live on baby-shit wages. I'm not sure whether blowing Barbaro becomes more or less enjoyable with age.