JESSICA DaSILVA

This weekend, my boyfriend, Brett Roegiers, and I hit up Barnes & Noble.

After browsing the Web design section for a while, he walked over to the psychology section and grabbed “Blink.” It wasn’t a Web design book. It actually explores the way people make snap decisions and judgments, but I know he’ll find a way to apply it to Web design. He also bought a pocket journal with grids so he can sketch out his designs whenever he’s inspired.

Meanwhile, I opted for “From Yellow Dog Democrats to Red State Republicans” by David R. Colburn.

Colburn had come into my state politics class a week or two ago, and I was really inspired by his lecture. While I keep up on politics all the time by checking my Google Reader news feeds between classes and religiously listening to NPR (especially “All Things Considered“), I feel like I never really knew much about Florida’s more recent political history.

I had been turned off to Florida history in elementary school when all my teachers told us about was Ponce de Leon and about 55 million different Seminole wars. Where was this in my lessons?

Regardless, I had to have it. I adore politics and that’s what I have my heart set on reporting. I know if I’m lucky, there’s about a 89.9 percent chance I’ll be starting off covering state politics. After that, I’ll have to work my way up the food chain to get where I want to be.

I feel like I meet a lot of students in the J-school who don’t realize this. They think they’ll be able to graduate with a 4.0 GPA, an internship at their hometown newspaper and “President of [insert generic school organization here]” on their resumes and get a job at The New York Times or Vogue.

In these instances, I keep my mouth shut, but think to myself “Do you live in under a rock?? Don’t you know the Times is on a hiring freeze? Haven’t you researched this? Do you not realize how small the job market is for journalists today?”

I think a lot of students are completely unaware of how cut throat this industry is. With the onset of online journalism, students aren’t just competing with each other. They’re competing with seasoned reporters because those reporters’ skills aren’t up-to-date.

I want to report on national politics someday. So this is what I’m doing to get there:

1. A second major in political science
2. Spending about 40 hours a week at my job at the Alligator
3. Applying to spring internships related to politics in Washington, D.C., and Tallahassee
4. Applying to as many summer internships as possible
5. Learning and practicing multimedia skills
6. Memorizing names, places, jargon, policies, etc. on the state and national level
7. Reading publications and blogs about politics and about journalism, especially Mindy McAdams‘ blog
8. Listening to NPR and not KISS 105.3 FM (or whatever most people listen to)
9. Reading nonfiction books to gain institutional knowledge and fiction to learn style and voice
10. BLOGGING about what I’m doing
11. Keeping in touch with interviewers from the internship fairs and other networking events
12. Looking for ways to brush up my American Sign Language skills
13. Anything else someone in the industry tells me would help

Brett and I are passionate about journalism and want to be amazing journalists. We eat, sleep and breathe journalism, because it’s not a 9-5 job. It’s a lifestyle. If you’re not living it, then this isn’t the industry for you.