This is the second installment in an occasional series of guest columns from graduating seniors about what they’ll be doing after graduation. Whether it’s video games, a job or anything in between, everyone’s got a “what’s next” story. Interested in sharing yours? Email us.

“No jobs match the specified criteria.”

This is the message I get when I search for Editorial and Writing jobs on Condé Nast’s career Web site. No editorial jobs? At all? At the company that publishes Vogue, Vanity Fair, Self, GQ and Glamour?

The author. Photo by Julie Beck / North by Northwestern

I am closing in on four years of hard times at Medill, which included the requisite “Medill F” and of course zero money in the bank from summer after summer of unpaid internships. At this point, I thought I would be guaranteed to find a magazine job that would launch me on my path to becoming the next Graydon Carter.

Yet, as I prep my résumé and begin to send out cover letters, the media industry slowly seems to be disintegrating around me. Magazines are closing left and right, the newspaper industry is dying and the HR departments at magazine companies aren’t even scheduling informational interviews. The New York Times Company lost $75 million dollars in the first quarter and the Chicago Tribune cut more than 50 more jobs this week. The magazine industry isn’t doing any better. Reports released by the Publishers Information Bureau reveal that magazines experienced an average 25.9 percent decrease in ad pages in the first quarter.

Needless to say, hiring prospects are grim right now. I ventured out to the Medill Career Fair a few weeks ago only to discover that most companies were offering only unpaid internships. When recruiters took my résumé and scrawled “looking for full-time” across the top, it felt like they might as well be writing “FAT CHANCE” and tossing it in the trash.

So what now? Medill students typically don’t start searching for jobs until Spring Quarter. Unlike consulting or finance companies, which typically hire a certain number of grads each year, hiring within the media industry is done on an as-needed basis. That said, I probably wouldn’t have a job by graduation even in a good year, which means that come June 22 I’ll be headed back to my parents’ home on the East Coast to start getting serious about my job search.

Despite the odds, I still plan to pursue a career in media, although I am open to seeking out other communications-related positions as well. Many of my friends in Medill are choosing to pursue marketing or public relations, or are leaving the field entirely. However, I’m confident that the media industry will bounce back eventually and I’ve been resisting my mom’s desire for me to attend law school for too long for me to give in now.

In the meantime, I’m grateful that Medill’s curriculum has allowed me to double major and encourages students to take most of their classes outside of Medill. Hopefully, this will give me the broad base of knowledge that I will need to get a scarce journalism job, or to branch out into other fields if necessary.

Medill is currently implementing new curriculum and programs that address the changing role of the media. Unfortunately, these changes came a little too late for the class of 2009. The opportunity for undergraduates to receive a certificate in Integrated Marketing Communications and receive comprehensive multimedia training as part of their curriculum will help future generations of Medill grads adjust more smoothly to the changing media world. Not me, though!

In the meantime, I’m praying that I won’t still be living at home a year from now. In an attempt to soothe my fears, I googled “useless majors”, hoping to find some reassuringly ridiculous areas of study that would make my journalism major woes seem minor. Sadly, the most frequently listed useless major that I found was art history. My double major along with journalism? Art history. FML.

Amanda Woerner used to write NBN’s fashion column.