To live an old dream or create a new one

Haven't updated lately. Guess I've been busy/lazy. But I have been thinking about the future. My mom told me to update my resume the other day and I've also been gradually looking into graduate school.

And I'm ready for 'it', the real world. But of course I'm not ready to leave Penn State. A few co-workers when finding out I was a senior asked if I was excited to get out of school. Hell. NO. I love Penn State too much to want to leave, but I know it will come to an end. But I still have a year, so not too soon.

But with graduation less than a year away, I have to start really thinking about the future. And it's a difficult situation because of both the economy and the troubles newspapers are facing. Grad school is looking like a good idea and I know what I would study if I went: Library sciences. Yet, at the same time, I feel like grad school would almost be giving up on my dream. Why go study something completely different than journalism when since middle school I've known that was the field I wanted to go into? What would be the point of four years on the Collegian, four years of studying, living and loving journalism to just go on and study something completely different?

I feel like going to grad school would almost be giving up on my dream. I could go into journalism when I graduate, but after four years of studying something different I wouldn't want that time to go to waste by not doing something related to my grad degree.

All I've wanted to do for the longest time was to graduate and move to Brooklyn and work on a newspaper or magazine. Copy editing, writing, whatever I'm offered really.

And when fall comes and then spring, too. I'll try everything and take the best offer. But if I get into grad school and get offered a job copy editing a paper in N.Y. (or even Boston or Philadelphia) I think I'd take the job offer. Sure I'd love to put off diving into the real world a little longer and continue my education. But then I feel if I don't go after my dreams now, they may slip away and possibly be replaced by new dreams. And new dreams are great, but I don't think I'm willing to let go of the ones I have now in the hope that new ones will come along. In the end everyone has an opinion. But mine is the most important.

The future is mine alone and I have to choose for myself what direction to go in. And whatever opportunity looks like the one that will help me to follow my bliss is the one I will reach out and take -- even if the salary isn't great, even if I'm in an old warehouse converted to loft in seedy Williamsburg as long as I am doing what I love to do, that's what will matter. I just hope the opportunity presents itself to me, because I don't want to have to settle for less than what my heart desires.