After a semester’s hard work of scouring the internet for writing positions, I landed an internship at Forcechange.com. The first thing I did when I heard the news was fill out the online acceptance form. The second thing I did was to leap up from my chair and do a happy dance. This happy dance was a disco with a lot of bouncing. If my sister could have seen it, she would have teased me mercilessly. Because that’s what sisters do.

Forcechange.com is a site that publishes petitions for progressive causes like social justice, animal welfare, and the environment. My first petition was an appeal to the mayor of the City of Victoria, trying to get them to stop dumping their raw sewage into the ocean. As you can imagine, raw sewage does not mix well with marine ecosystems. And Victoria currently dumps over 34 million gallons of it into the ocean every day. Not good.

This internship is something I’m excited about doing for its own sake. Even if I wasn’t trying to build up a writing career, I would still want to do it because the causes it works for are important. What I’ve discovered about myself through my semester of job searching is that I don’t want to be in it just for the paycheck. Don’t get me wrong. The paycheck is important. Right now, I’m saving up for my independence.  I live with my mother and I’d like to get my own place. But eight hours a day five days a week is a long time to spend on something I don’t care about.

So my advice to all you new graduates heading out into the world is to try and find something that interests you. That and don’t get too discouraged, it may take a few months but eventually you will land something. And when you do, it’s okay to cut loose and do a happy dance.