By Trina Otero

I saw this on the back of a U-Haul last week.  Apparently I’m so transparent that now even vehicles can read my mind – like so many other graduates, I am at a crossroads in life and I must make a decision about my next step.  Questions flood my thoughts – should I stay in Indiana? Should I move to California? Should I go back to my parents and stay with them until I find work? Should I study again? Should I go on an adventure?

I absolutely love studying, I do.  But I am very tired of struggling to focus on my studies while being financially unstable – it is very draining and difficult.  I have done that dance for six years.  I need change.  So now that I have my B.A. I should  swim into unchartered waters for a while.  I am hungry to work as a writer or PR specialist so those are the opportunities I have searched for thus far.  But even as I search I haven’t settled on a place that I would want to live and work. I’m completely undecided.  But I do want an opportunity.

I’m not the only one standing at this crossroad with the sign “Where Will U Go Next?”  My Journalism/PR gurus at the IUPUI School of Journalism have found themselves at this very stop.  The whole institution  has truly been shaken at its foundation – no joke.  The very core of SoJ [in my opinion] has been removed.  Now, we may not know who will be replacing our former staff and we don’t know the skill sets they have, but we do know that some amazing and talented people have been let go and this is a huge loss for the school.  These people have guided and impacted hundreds of students in the past years, myself included.  I don’t write this out of anger but out of observation.  They taught us more than Journalism & PR – they taught us life lessons, how to be confident about our work, how to become professionals, and how to be good at what we do.

Although this is a new post, I wrote it last week.  On Friday, July 29, 2011, I was offered a position as the politics & culture web writer at ChaCha, and I am very excited about this new opportunity!  It is my first paid writing job.