This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at U Iowa chapter.
Are you dating, or at least friends with a journalism major? You should be. Here are ‘The Reasons Why’ studying journalism is (at least one of) the best majors out there!
- You know what’s going on. As a Journalism student, you are required to know the news. You probably even get quizzed on it on class. You watch the news, read the paper, and have a Twitter feed full of CNN, ABC, and other breaking news sources that keep you in the know. No one can try and pull a fast one on you, or try and say you don’t know what’s going on in the world, because you were probably one of the first ones to break the news to your Twitter followers about the child abuse scandal at Penn State, or even the news of Ashton Kutcher’s divorce.
- You have more than one career path. Journalism majors are creative, smart, and passionate. You probably didn’t really know what you wanted to do at first, you just knew that you were better at writing then you were math and science. Lucky for you, journalism majors have a plethora of options. There’s public relations, sports reporting, magazine writing, radio journalism, broadcast journalism, photography, editing, media relations, social media experts, marketing, and of course newspaper writing. It may not be super easy to get a job when you graduate, but at least you have options!
- You get real-world experience while in College. You hear it every day: Get an internship or two. As hard as it is to land one, it’s the best kind of experience you can get. Employers today require at least one internship before hiring you as a full-time employee, so the hounding you hear from your J-school professors is actually helpful. You are actually quite lucky to get professional training before you even leave college, not all majors can say that. Here at Iowa, we’re lucky to have staff at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication that specifically work on finding and sending out internships to students, so finding one is easier than ever.
- You get to do cool stuff. All other majors should be jealous of you, because you most likely get to do some pretty cool stuff in journalism. Maybe it is reporting on a basketball or football game, or going on a company tour of PR agencies in Chicago, or maybe it’s doing in-depth reporting in the Iowa City community, but we bet that other majors don’t get to do that stuff. Maybe you held the ESPN camera cords on a Hawkeye game day…hey, we never said it would be that glamorous, but it sure is super cool.
- You can tell it like it is. Like we said earlier, you know the current world situation, you know about the economic crisis, and you know what in the world the Occupy Wall Street protestors want. Your grandparents think that your generation is lazy and all your time is spent “Facebook-ing” (just most of it, but shh!) but you can have in-depth conversations with your parents and grandparents about politics, world issues, and government. You know probably more than they do, and you are the most aware and interested out of all your friends on our country and what’s going on
- Journalism majors are passionate about writing, news, and information. We’re excellent at writing about our emotions, expressing opinions, and we’d rather have a paper due than a midterm exam any day. Every day in our major, we get to do the stuff we really care about. We get to do investigating reporting, feature length stories, capture moving pictures, help clients with public relations, and more. We aren’t in it for the money, or the fame, because neither of those two usually happens out of a journalism degree, so you know we really enjoy what we do. We’re dedicated and enthusiastic, which makes us extremely hirable as well. Not every day a student or employee can say that they absolutely love what they do…journalism majors can.
Disclaimer: Okay, I admit, I’m a little biased about journalism and all the awesome stuff that comes with it. Don’t agree that it’s a great major? Tell us in the comment section below!