“So, where are you doing your JR?”
I’m pretty sure every Medill student hears this at some point. Probably, multiple times. We get the pitch for Journalism Residency (JR) even before we get to campus: It’s an internship baked into the major curriculum, so Journalism students get to acquire real work experience, make professional contacts and put the skills they’ve learned in the last three or four years to the test. We dream of glamorous placements in places like Variety, People, WMBF-TV, The Texas Tribune and others – placements where we do real work and shake hands with our idols and why, yes, I will gladly accept that full-time position when I graduate.
To be clear, I’m not opposed to JR itself. I haven’t gone on mine yet, and I’m excited to work for the site I’m matched with. JR is a valuable opportunity that allows Medill students to finish off their undergrad careers with a bang. The problem I have is with what comes before the JR quarter.
Maybe it’s just me, but I spent a lot of time stressing out about my JR years before I needed to. Even in my first and second years, I would occasionally have a mini panic about not getting a good internship, which meant I wouldn’t get a good JR site, which meant I would be miserable and have no job prospects. This could be broadly applied to the endless hustle of the internship search and the portfolio building process, but I think the sword of Damocles of JR hanging over my head made that stress more acute. My advice for current and incoming underclassmen is to not worry about JR too far in advance. Instead, focus on finding journalistic passions and having fun while also working toward the future.
Students shouldn’t have to worry anyways, as JR prep doesn’t really ramp up until two quarters before, when you get tossed into a Canvas class with assignments focused on honing your resume and portfolio. These are pretty low-stress, and they did help me make my resume a lot better for both my JR and graduate school applications. As this quarter got closer, I had to deal with more questions about JR and how it worked which was slightly annoying, but these are relatively trivial nuisances compared to the actual process that takes place the quarter before JR.
The fun begins when Medill releases The List. This voluminous document contains all the JR sites for the upcoming quarter. Students will also receive a list containing the names of previous JR interns at those sites. Reading The List is a challenging experience. A few big names pop out, but increasingly it seems marketing and public relations takes up the lion’s share of sites. No WaPo or NYT here. Depending on your interests, there might be a ton of sites to pick from that fit your niche, but for someone who focused on writing A&E content for most of undergrad, there weren’t a ton of opportunities there. Still, there were things I wanted to learn, like podcasting and foreign policy, so I picked Foreign Policy Podcasts as my top choice.
The interview with FP went great!
But they wanted someone with more experience.
Same thing with Responsible Statecraft, my second choice, of which I was the only candidate and had been recommended by the previous intern.
Nope.
At this point, it’s like week eight, and I’m almost certain almost everyone else has a site. What am I doing wrong? Was I wrong to approach JR as a learning experience where I could cultivate skills I didn’t have? Did I pick the wrong thing to write about for two years? This frustration was compounded by the one-at-a-time nature of JR selection, which meant my resume and portfolio were only sent to the site I was actively interviewing for, meaning that other sites would slip by in the meantime. Would I get a good site or be miserable for my last undergrad quarter at NU? What was I doing wrong?
Honestly, I’m glad my other two opportunities fell through. I think the site I did find, Stranger’s Guide, is a great fit for me, and I’m excited about the work I’ll be doing during my Spring Quarter. What I’ve learned through this ordeal, however, is that JR gets put on a pedestal from the moment Medill students arrive. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a great opportunity, and one I hope and think will open doors for me in my future career. However, I think some of the sleepless nights worrying about my JR or panicking after my rejections could have been spent more productively – enjoying my journalism journey, rather than the destination.
Because I still have a little ways to go.
