Last night as I was putting together my graduate portfolio, it finally hit me: The end is near. While it doesn't count for a grade or anything, I still found it extremely difficult to do. How do you boil down your college career to four clips? Not an easy thing to do...
I ended up choosing two clips from VOX (a cover and a feature), one feature from class and a full-page infographic I did for the Missourian. It was tough because there are a lot of clips I'm proud of but many of them I didn't think worked for this portfolio. Also, I think a lot of my stronger clips came from more than two years ago, so those had to be thrown out the window. A lot of the work I've done for internships is clean, but very simple, such as post card and flyer design.
Putting together the portfolio was a lot like designing for a magazine. You're trying your best to impress people you don't know and who you'll probably never meet. You'll only receive some written criticism at the end (kind of like letters to the editor).
The process also asks you to evaluate the journalism experience as a whole and share some of your experiences. For me the most obvious question was: Looking back, if you were a pre-journalism student again, would you... No I doubt, I would do it all over again. There are other things I wish I would have done (like designed at the Missourian, gotten more involved with SND, taken a photo class and graphic design classes), but overall I'll walk away from the Missouri School of Journalism feeling like I made the most of my opportunities.
Putting together a portfolio is definitely difficult to do, especially when you're trying to impress a potential employer. I must admit, though, I didn't put very much thought into my graduate portfolio. I pretty much thought of it as just one more requirement I had to fulfill before I graduated. I ended up choosing four clips that were all from this semester since I thought it best encompassed my experience with magazine design here. I am interested in hearing feedback from uninvolved third parties, though.
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