Guest Blogger! Taking Action.

Hello Readers.  Today is a special day here because Teresa from First Impressions will be posting today.  She and I were paired through the 20SB Blogger Swap and are excited for the opportunity to swap blogs for the day.  Her blog is great, so please take a minute to check it out.  Without further ado:

Hi everyone! My name is Teresa and I’m guest blogging here at The Sunset Won’t as part of a blog swap. Just a little bit about myself, I’m a college student in San Francisco who loves knitting, wandering around old bookstores, traveling, and watching old movies. I blog at First Impressions .

The topic of our blog swap is: Action. What will you do next year that you've been putting off for too long? With New Year’s resolution lists coming up in a couple of weeks, it seems like a fitting topic. It’s the time of year when we all take a good look at our lives and decide how we can improve them. Action then is the bridge between these ideas and actual change.

I’ve actually been thinking about this topic for a while. I’m currently a senior in college and I’m graduating this upcoming May. I’m a Communication Studies major with minors in Media Studies, Catholic Studies, and English. I’ve had internships for a TV news station, a non-profit blog, a newspaper, a magazine, and next semester I’m working for HarperOne book publisher. I know it’s a weird combo, but it does manage to reflect my different interests and I’ve learned a lot from each gig.

For the past year or so, I’ve gotten used to people asking me what I’m planning to do after graduation. Usually once my parents’ friends hear that I’m into media studies, they always assume I want to be a reporter on TV. I get a lot of reactions like, “Oh my God! You’re gonna meet Anderson Cooper!” or “Be careful! You know they kidnap journalists for ransom in other countries.” I appreciate their enthusiasm and concern, so I almost feel bad every time I have to tell them that I don’t really see myself as an in-front-of-the-camera kind of person.

The follow-up question then is inevitably, “Well, what do you want to do?” I wish I could tell them that I know exactly what I want to do and that I have a fabulous job lined up for me after graduation. The truth is, I’m still trying to figure out what I’m meant to do. But that’s ok. I know that 2011 will be the year of action. This is the year that I’m applying for grad school. Wow, it felt good just typing that last sentence out.

I know I want to go into publishing, either book or magazine. I’m a word nerd who can’t get enough to read, I love hearing and coming up with new ideas, and I’m a stickler for details. Publishing and me seem like a match made in heaven. My dream is to get into the Columbia Publishing Course , an über intense six-week, post-undergrad crash course in magazine and book publishing. On their website they tout it to be “the shortest graduate school in the country. It would take you a year in an entry-level position in publishing to learn what you will learn in six weeks here, and 10 years to meet all the people you will meet.” The course is composed of lectures and book and magazine/digital publishing workshops. It also offers a post-course career fair so students can meet alumni and publishing company reps.

Doesn’t it sound awesome? I don’t know if I’m going to get in, but I’m going for it. Like I said before, 2011 will be the year of action and I’m hoping this will change my life.


Well, that’s it for now. I’d like to thank Heather for hosting me today. You can check out her guest post on my blog here.