What I'm doing with my life (at least next year)

It's official: I'm Americorps material.

I had my follow-up interview at Madison Elementary in my hometown of St. Cloud, Minn., for the position of Literacy Tutor in the Minnesota Reading Corps. I spent an hour talking to Madison's principal and one other staff member and toured the school. Then I left to run some errands. Within an hour and a half my cell phone was ringing. First it was the principal, offering me the position. Then it was the Central Minnesota Americorps director, asking me where to send the contracts.

As quickly as they offered the job, I accepted it even more quickly.

Why would someone with a bachelor's in journalism and five years' experience in the newspaper industry jump at the chance to make $800 dollars a month in a completely unrelated field? There's a lot of reasons. I like kids and I like reading, and this job involves helping kids in grades K-3 catch up on their reading skills, which sounds like it could be a lot of fun. I've been given a lot in my life and this is an opportunity to give something back. Sixty percent of kids at Madison are on free or reduced-price lunches. Many are immigrants or children of immigrants (the principal estimated that 7 different languages are spoken there). They need a helping hand and if I can give it to them, that would be pretty rewarding.

St. Cloud was basically Lilly-white when I lived there. It's obviously changing a lot, and it will be exciting to delve into the city and really experience those changes first-hand. It will also be nice to spend more time with my parents and Grandma (believe it or not, I'm not dreading moving back in with them at age 27) and my old high school friends, many of whom are only an hour away in the Twin Cities.

But the thing that enticed me most about this position was that they wanted me. The principal and the other staff member I met were both excited and enthusiastic about the prospect of working with me. When they called me back they told me I nailed the interview and they had talked it over and decided they didn't want to interview anyone else. After the past few months, hearing that just felt really good.

The responses I've gotten from the newspapers I've applied at has been much different. I sent out about 10 applications, to places as far-flung as Ames, Iowa; Emporia, Kansas; Bozeman, Montana; upstate New York and Shawano, Wisconsin. I haven't had a single interview. I haven't even gotten a "We received your application, thank you very much" courtesy e-mail. The Ames job was the one I wanted the most, so I sent them two follow-up e-mails. A month later I finally got a response, a mass e-mail saying they'd had 150 applicants in the first 10 days the job was posted and that of course they were not able to grant all of of us interviews. "The position has been filled. Thanks for your interest."

I've gotten tired of the geniuses who tell me I should have known better than to go into newspapers in the first place, that anyone could have seen this coming. I know I'm not supposed to take this personally, but it kind of implies that all the articles I've written over the past five years weren't worth the paper they were printed on. That sure, my writing is OK, but no one's going to pay for it, especially when they can get somebody else's for free on some silly blog (like this one, I suppose, which spurs me to say that if you're reading this in place of a newspaper -- don't. Go out and buy a newspaper as well, because there's much more pertinent information in there).

Most of the journalists I've met have the same motivations. We're not in it for the money, because very few of us get paid much anyway. We're not in it for the fame, because aside from a few well-known columnists, we're all just a bunch of anonymous by-lines. Most of us are in it because we love to write, we love to create something out of thin air, take information people need and craft it into a clear and entertaining package. And we like the idea that once in awhile something we write might touch somebody, change a life, or otherwise make the world a slightly better place. We don't demand much money for this service, but we would like enough to live on.

I'd still like to make a living writing someday, but right now trying to find someone who will let me do that just looks like too much of a miserable, ego-crushing, uphill slog. I think I'm just kind of burned out on the whole newspaper industry and readers who would rather flock to TMZ than pay a measly $2 for the New York Times. So I'll take a year off and see if the industry can sort itself out. In the meantime, if I can teach a few kids to read and maybe even love reading so much that they'll pay a little bit to do it in the future, then so much the better. Basically, it's just nice to feel wanted again.