Turned Around in Morgantown
By Brian Wachur
I’m not sure if it was an extremely convincing tour guide or just luck that brought me to West Virginia University.
The thought of college never entered my head in any specific fashion until around November of my senior year in high school. I was never one of those students who had lofty collegiate goals since the age of 13. For me, higher education was always a passing assumption—I would probably go, and that was about all I knew.
So, it probably was luck that brought me from central Maryland to Morgantown in 2001. My freshman year was spent adjusting—adjusting to my new surroundings, my new social companions (a few of whom would become legitimate friends), and my uncertain role in a town that I didn’t know. It was often intimidating and unnerving.
However, during those tumultuous first two years, I slowly began to develop a more serious, more focused attitude toward school and work. Beginning with the start of my freshman year, I found myself focusing more on schoolwork and putting more pressure on myself to succeed. It was a dramatic and unexpected turnaround from my high school career.
In 2003, I became involved with two extracurricular activities: I was an office volunteer for the American Red Cross in Morgantown and an arts and entertainment staff writer at the Daily Athenaeum. In both cases, I was essentially going in cold. I didn’t know anyone who worked at the Red Cross or the DA, and I wasn’t sure what to expect from either job—I just knew I wanted to get out-of-class experience in journalism and communications.
Both jobs worked out well for me. I soon became blood services coordinator for the Red Cross, a volunteer position that found me working as the primary student contact for organizing and promoting all on-campus blood drives at WVU. Having come in as an office volunteer, it was an amazing feeling to know that my supervisor believed in me enough to put me in a role with such responsibility.
Meanwhile, I moved up to assistant arts and entertainment editor at the DA in fall 2004. It was a role that consumed a lot of my time during the week, but the experience I received was worth it. As we prepared the section for publication five nights a week, I gained a strong sense of how a newsroom really operates and a deeper understanding of how a career in journalism would be.
As I wrapped up my college career in 2005, I worked as an intern with the WVU Alumni Association. This was another job that began somewhat ambiguously and developed into a fantastic experience with excellent coworkers. The internship gave me the opportunity to meet many different WVU alumni and talk to them about career goals and post-college options.
It was amazing to me to see how a large-scale operation was run so efficiently by just a small group of people. Before my time at the Alumni Association, I had not realized how much alumni contribute to the school and how important the relationship is for both sides. It really made me proud to be a Mountaineer when I saw how much alumni care for the school and its students.
The wide range of communications and public relations projects that I worked on at the Alumni Association put the finishing touches on my college career, and I graduated from WVU in December of last year.
I felt ready for the “real world.” Nervous, hesitant, and apprehensive—but ready.
With the encouragement of one of my teachers in the School of Journalism, I got in touch with Scott Widmeyer, a WVU alumnus and chairman of Widmeyer Communications—a public relations firm in Washington, D.C.
Immediately following graduation, I was hired as a fellow at Widmeyer. In March, the fellowship turned into a full-time position with the firm as an account executive. In my six months with Widmeyer, I have experienced a wonderful transition from the college world to the professional world, and it was made much easier with the skills I developed at WVU. My coworkers are all fantastic, and I look forward to coming into work every day.
I have heard friends and classmates talk about jobs they’ve taken since graduation, and many of them are complaining. I feel incredibly lucky to have ended up at Widmeyer.
It’s sometimes strange to look back on my freshman year of college and how intimidated I was by WVU. I have a great sense of accomplishment when I think about the work I did and experiences I had while in school.
I no longer feel lucky to have ended up where I am—I feel I earned it with hard work and an outgoing desire to learn as much as I could. But WVU and the people I met there gave me the chance to put my skills to work, and for that I simply feel thankful.