It’s the end of the semester and graduation is almost upon us. Seniors will be walking up the stairs, on the podium and receiving their degrees. Other seniors will be sitting to the side, biting their nails knowing that it will be them soon enough – stepping off of the stage and into the real world.

Yeah, that was me last semester.

After a small freak out and deciding to wait until summer to graduate, I felt okay with it. The closer that summer came, another freak out happened and now I am finally graduating in December and I seem okay with that. Yeah, I “seem” okay with that.

Granted, I’m 27-years-old and will be 28 when I graduate, I think I’ve done pretty well. I started here in 2004 and changed my major three times until I realized what I wanted to do.

I learned something from an ex-friend of mine who was a mass media major like me. She went to school here thinking she was going to work in Hollywood on a movie set or television show. She concentrated solely on working with “films” that are made here on campus. She graduated almost two years ago and she is still living in her hometown which is as far as Hollywood as Mayberry is.

I learned from her mistakes.

While I’m a video emphasis like she was, I worked on [school name]-TV’s news show, worked a few sporting events, learned to work live on [school radio station]FM and I became a bigger part of this newspaper. Doing all of those things helped me realize what I really wanted to do in my life – be a journalist.

Yeah, what I want to do with my life in a professional sense isn’t even my major, but that’s okay. I think being a mass media major has helped me a lot because journalism is moving so far into the media realm with online videos, blogs, podcast, etc. I’ve signed up for extra journalism classes in the fall and I might go to graduate school for journalism after I graduate here.

If grad school doesn’t happen, I’ve already got a few contacts at a few places that I have in mind. If I can’t get a job working at a newspaper or magazine, I can always try to get a job a television or radio station because I have that experience.

My dream job might be following the NASCAR circuit and reporting on the races or keeping the country up on the latest gossip with Britney Spears and interviewing boy bands, but I’ve learned to think realistically. I may never get that job where I can interview Tony Stewart or Bon Jovi, but I haven’t based my entire college career on that goal. I’ve thought realistically and know I’m not going to graduate and jump into a job at ESPN or Entertainment Weekly.

That doesn’t mean I can’t dream about interviewing Ashton Kutcher. If we didn’t have dreams and fantasies, we would be boring people who have nothing to strive for.

That wouldn’t be fun at all.

This is an opinion piece I wrote in this week’s newspaper.