Inspiration from Alumni Newsletters

I get an alumni newsletter every month updating me on what graduates of my journalism program are up to these days. Does anyone else get these regular updates from your former undergrad or grad programs? My first year out of school, I’d read the newsletter and get this intense feeling of jealousy. Look at all these amazing things my peers are doing! Every month was like a punch in the gut. But I got my career going, and I began reading these newsletters as a way to inspire me to reach higher, and dream bigger. Maybe I’d get my name in that newsletter one day. Sometimes, when I saw that someone was doing something cool, I’d look up his or her contact information and send him or her note saying how much I admired what he or she was doing. Sometimes I never heard back, but sometimes I did, and kept a conversation going.

I never did get my name into the newsletter. I never got around to sending a note to my grad program letting them know how proud I was of my accomplishments, or really felt the need to do that. Being happy with where I am today has been good enough.

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