Jobs: the one for now, and the one for later

I’m one of the few people who actually know exactly what she wants to do after I finally graduate from Monmouth. My future is, loosely, planned out. I know that I want to start off at a weekly newspaper, hopefully The Messenger-Gazette/The Reporter, located in Somerville, New Jersey, right near my house. I want to try and get my feet wet in an environment that isn’t too insane or hectic so that I can get the feeling for the pace and way things work at a newspaper before diving in, head first, at a daily newspaper. Then, I want to move up to a daily newspaper, but a small one, preferably the Courier-News, located in Bridgewater, the town I currently live in and where I have spent my entire life. From there, I’d like to move up to a bigger daily newspaper, like the Star-Ledger, one of my favorite newspapers. Beyond that, I’m not sure where I’ll end up. I know that I don’t want to go to the New York Times, Daily News, or New York Post, simply because each of those newspapers have a large negative reputation. I think that the Washington Post may be a newspaper I would like to work for because of their historic reputation for great stories that make significant changes in society. The most important thing is that I want to be at a newspaper where I am happy and feel like I am doing my best work and am in the best situation I could have ever asked for.

My dream job isn’t at any particular newspaper. My dream is what my writing does for the community it serves. I want to write stories that will change something, even if it is just someone’s opinion about a topic. There’s nothing better to me than writing a story and seeing the story have an effect on society. I wrote an editorial last spring about the lack of accessible handicapped parking for the communication building. There was a single handicap parking place in the student lot closest to the communication building. There are three parking spots in the small, faculty parking lot that is located right next to the building, but two of those spaces are continually taken by two faculty members who refuse to park in the actual faculty and staff parking lot, right next to this one, that has numerous handicap spots that are almost always empty. Or, they could also park in the spots directly next to the handicap spots, a place I can’t park, but refuse to move over. Monmouth was breaking the law, plain and simple. If you look at the faculty lot, which is actually somewhat smaller than the student lot across the street, but had four times the number of handicap parking spots, so why should the commuter lot have only one? That parking spot was perpetually taken by the same person, leaving two of us to fight over the single handicapped spot located right near the building. I asked a police officer if I could park next to the handicapped spots in the faculty lot nearest the building, and he told me that the police preferred I wouldn’t, simply because they were afraid other students would think they were allowed to park there, even if they don’t have a handicap pass like I do. I didn’t have a choice, so I parked there anyway, continually terrified I’d come out from class to see my car ticketed or even towed.

The article I wrote quoted the state’s policy on handicap accessibility which uses a ratio to determine how many handicapped parking spots a public place must provide for handicapped people. The commuter lot was short two parking spots, and was breaking the law. I had made this fact public, and could have taken the school to court for breaking the Americans with Disabilities Act, and would have a strong case.

The following semester, this past fall, when I returned to school, I was ecstatic to see that two new handicapped parking spots had been painted in the commuter lot. I know that this doesn’t make any of the commuter students, besides the handicapped ones, happy, but those spots were needed and are filled each day. However, they were placed on the far side of the parking lot, the farthest away from the communications building the spots could have been placed. There was no better feeling than knowing that I have helped at least two or more handicapped students get to class more easily. And that’s my dream job. There would be nothing more satisfying than being able to work for a newspaper where I have the ability to make changes in the community and help others through my writing, and that would be my dream job, no matter where that it or what it pays.