You're Hired.

Today, Dan told me he'd hired me.

Alright, he didn't say that he would hire me now, but he told me that if I ever did decide to go into journalism and if the Telegraph ever gets out of its hiring freeze, then I should think about putting in my application at the Telegraph. I could go to SIUE and get my master's on the side, he said. Maybe I could think about television broadcasting, even.

It was a little unexpected dose of reality for me. I guess that I am going to be a junior (technically a senior) this year and that it's less than a year until I have to start thinking about my future, job- or graduate school-wise. Suddenly it hit me that I actually could do something like that: live at home, work at the Telegraph, go to grad school part-time. I could seriously start my career off that way.

The thought got me a little excited. Not necessarily the fact that I could work at the Telegraph, but that I have a future ahead of me. I can do whatever I want--as long as it's not engineering or scientific studies--and go anywhere that I want, to a certain degree. I do have something to provide to companies, businesses, or newspapers for that matter: I can write, and (apparently) I'm kind of good at it. Besides that, I have nothing to hold me back at the moment. And that's a pretty good feeling right about now.