For This Bureau Chief, No Day Is Ever The Same
by Alina Gonzalez '08
Amanda Paulson, Class of ’97, knows firsthand the meaning and wisdom in
Oscar Wilde’s observation that life is what happens when you’re making other
plans.
In Amanda’s case, a passion for the outdoors and a desire to work where the
Rockies serve as nature’s skyscrapers was undercut by an accident that waylaid
her for weeks: she broke her ankle while leading a wilderness program for the
Eagle Rock School in Colorado. The mishap forced her to quickly reconsider her
career choices. Since continuing as a wilderness instructor for Eagle Rock
required Amanda to be on her feet for hours everyday, she was unable to stay
with the program that so suited her.
Always athletic, Amanda had worked with freshmen Dartmouth Outing Club (DOC)
trips every year: once as a rock climbing instructor, once as the leader of an
extreme hiking trip, and once as the equipment manager for the Hanover Crew.
Rugby, skiing, snowboarding, ultimate Frisbee and climbing gym monitor rounded
out her list of physical activities.
And suddenly, she found herself on crutches. But the incident generated an
unexpected outcome: it propelled Amanda towards a career that she had long been
interested in, and has been involved with ever since-- journalism.
“After I broke my ankle, I started asking myself ‘what am I doing here’ and
‘what are my options’ and I decided to give journalism a try,” she says.
At that point, Amanda still was “very focused on staying out west.” She
applied and was turned down for an internship at the High Country News —again,
a development for which she later was grateful.
“I am so glad I didn’t get the job there because I ended up going to a
newspaper where I could do a much wider range of reporting… where I could be a
generalist.”
That paper: the highly esteemed Christian Science Monitor.
“Journalism is a tough field to break into,” Amanda says, “and I hadn’t
written for the D at Dartmouth. I knew I needed practical experience, so I
applied and the Monitor offered me a summer internship in Boston.”
Amanda only expected to remain with the Monitor for one season, but within a
couple of months the paper offered her a full-time job with a junior staff
program, a position that she recognized right away was “the perfect thing” for
her. “I have always been interested in a broad range of subjects and I like
being a generalist more than a specialist,” she says. “I have a desire to be
constantly learning and meeting new people and journalism provides that
opportunity.” One of the people Amanda befriended in Boston became her
husband, Josh Rollins, who was working at an investment firm while he acted on
the side part time.
“I learned a lot on the ground, and I rotated around on a number of
different sections at the Monitor,” she says. “For three years, I wrote and
edited stories in the Boston newsroom before I made a move.”
“I knew I wanted to work with a national bureau, and eventually a spot
opened up in Chicago,” she says. “I went ahead and took that not knowing quite
what to expect because it’s very different being on my own as opposed to being
in the news room. It, indeed, turned out to be a very independent role but one
I have loved because of the level of autonomy.” Amanda also describes Chicago
as “a better acting town” for her husband who then became a full time
actor.
For the past three and half years, Amanda has served as the Midwest Bureau
Chief for the Christian Science Monitor, directing coverage and writing about
events in the Midwest that she deems important nationally.
She also writes about education, agriculture and urban issues that don’t
necessarily contain an exclusive Midwest peg; she recently finished an article
on compensation for exonerated prisoners. In addition, she “fills in for
other areas of the country when it is needed,” as was the case in the wake of
Hurricane Katrina.
Amanda cherishes her job because “it takes a real ability to learn about
something, and then translate that and try to make it interesting for other
people to read about and absorb.” For anyone who finds a host of subjects
compelling, journalism is ideal in that “no day is ever the same.” In the past
weeks, Amanda has covered immigration rallies in downtown Chicago and the FCC’s
report to Congress suggesting that the commission be allowed to regulate
violence on television, to cite a couple of her articles.
“I can never predict what my schedule will be like,” she says. “We just
figure out our focus on a day to day basis, and it is never dull. I am always
meeting with incredibly interesting people, and I don’t just mean the
high-profile author or musician or politician, although they certainly are
noteworthy. But journalism provides an opportunity to come into contact with
coal miners and farmers and people with whom I might normally not have a reason
to be talking to. It is my job to gain their perspective and to communicate
their stories and their issues to the readers.”
How Amanda ended up where she is today was no linear feat. In fact, the Big
Green alum—who majored in Comparative Literature with a focus on French and
English prose— felt “very at sea” upon graduating and did not know what career
she wanted to pursue.
“But I did know that I liked to read, write and travel, that I wanted to
live internationally, and that I was interested in many subjects including
conservation and education,” she says. Her parents had instilled in
Amanda a reverence for the environment and she feels fortunate that she is,
periodically, able to cover it for the Monitor.
“My mother has spent most of her life both working and volunteering for
environmental groups and teaching pubic school children about birds and nature,
organizing prairie restoration trips, etc. We also did a lot of travel to
developing countries as a family which furthered my own interest in travel; my
father and mother were always very intellectually curious people who encouraged
me to have an interest in many subjects,” she says.
After graduating with a minor in Environmental Studies, Amanda went to Costa
Rica and worked for The Nature Conservancy, where she helped out with proposal
and grant writing. “It was a wonderful opportunity to learn Spanish, which has
helped me a great deal with my career,” she says.
Continuing along Amanda’s self-described “circuitous path,” she segued from
writing to education and from Central to North America. Amanda, who had grown
up in Barrington, Illinois, says she “loved the idea of living out West
again.”
She contacted another Dartmouth graduate who had taken a position with an
alternative education school near the Rockies. Amanda moved to Colorado and
taught French (which she had taken at Dartmouth, studied in more depth on the
Foreign Study Program in Toulouse, and eventually taught at Dartmouth as a
Drill Instructor); Spanish (which she had mastered in Costa Rica); and
Journalism (which she had always been interested in) at the Eagle Rock School.
After teaching for one year, she then joined classmate Heather Halstead ’97
traveling around the globe for nearly six months as part of a circumnavigation
education project called “Reach the World” that Heather had initiated.
After her sailing odyssey, Amanda rejoined the Eagle Rock School as a leader
of an Outward Bound Wilderness excursion—the trip on which she would break her
ankle and on which she would zero in on journalism as her next career move.
“I finally felt I had finished doing all of these different things and
wanted to think about where I was going next” she says. “I certainly feel like
my first three years out of school were all over the place, but I learned from
all of those wonderful experiences. In my job as a reporter, I frequently write
about education reform and it was very helpful to have spent that year as a
teacher.” And Amanda’s Spanish proficiency from the year she spent in Costa
Rica has proved “invaluable” to her as a reporter since the immigration stories
she now often covers entail her interviewing people in Spanish.
“I think its pretty common to want to do a lot of different things after
graduation,” Amanda says. “And it’s okay to try different routes, but make sure
that you are always learning, always challenging yourself, and always doing
something you are interested in.” She advises recent graduates to not panic,
and not “feel like you have to have it all figured out right away.”
“Find out if you are a people person… if you like working on teams, or
working independently—find something that plays to your skills. Don’t limit
yourself, and don’t do corporate recruiting just because it is the option that
is more formalized out there. Some of your career options might take more
creative thinking, but there are other directions to go” she says.
“I do wish that I had done a little bit more informational networking,” she
says. “I knew I didn’t want to go to graduate school, or go into a more
traditional field, but I could have talked to more family friends and Dartmouth
alums…to get a better sense of what some of the options are” she says.
Amanda also encourages students to live abroad. “The easiest time to do it
is right after college,” she says. “You don’t have to settle into the career
you’re going to be in forever—you can always change course. If things don’t
work out, they don’t work out. But it’s still always worth a shot. I made very
little money when I was in Costa Rica and teaching in Colorado, but you also
don’t have many obligations in terms of family and marriage… so it’s a great
time to take adventures,” she says, noting that she and Josh are embarking on a
new one themselves as they prepare for the birth of their first child.
“Life can be a roller coaster,” Amanda says, but at the end of the day,
doing what you love is worth the ups and downs.
|
