I’m not much of a risk-taker (ask any of my friends), but I took a risk this April. I did what no college senior is realistically supposed to do: I applied for only one position, at only one company.
I’ll let you guess where.
I’ve always rejected the oversimplification of our life goals into a single dream job. My fellow journalism peers at UO told me about their aspirations to work for the hotshot newspapers on the East Coast. Other classmates dreamt of doing PR for the influencers they’d admired for years.
My goal? Work with the most considerate and brilliant people I could find.
I found that at Hoffman, and I could tell within my first week that I’d struck gold.
Not only are the people that welcomed me into this office creative and warm, but they also really know what they’re doing. They’re a little nerdy, honestly. I liked that right away.
I spent the majority of college prioritizing discovery over one single direction. My journey started with journalism. I’m the daughter of an English teacher, so an innate love for writing, reading and analysis is entangled in who I am. I also knew by the time I reached college that I didn’t love writing just for the sake of writing and instead wanted to write about something real. Something that mattered. Journalism mattered.
I was a magazine feature writer my freshman year and became an editor my sophomore year. I started as a writing coach at the SOJC’s Writing Central. I lived and breathed journalism.
But at some point, during that flurry of deep, long-form journalism production, I came to the realization that the work was too solitary for me. It was lonely and repetitive. I craved collaboration, and I craved projects that grew.
My junior year is what I now see as my year of career experimentation.
In a new job as a journalist for the UO’s College of Education, I discovered that I truly loved interviewing researchers and then sharing their stories. I wanted to get better at writing about topics that were new to me — and fast — so I dove into track-and-field journalism.
Beyond extensive practice writing on deadlines, the hours I spent crowded elbow-to-elbow with other journalists for the chance to speak to an athlete or their media representative taught me the value of media relations. I discovered that I loved this too.
Can you see where I’m heading? When I discovered The Hoffman Agency and the people working here, I actually found my direction.
Hoffman is nerdy in all the ways that I am nerdy. I get to learn about the tech world and the people driving it, and then I get to write and collaborate with teammates on how to share these stories. There’s so much that’s new to me, and I’m going to have to learn it fast.
