DuckTales

Hi all, This is my first post. Exciting, I guess? After a nearly five year break, I'm finally taking the plunge and applying for a Master's in journalism. My B.A. isn't in journalism, I had a double humanities major (great average) from a top Canadian university. Here's the thing: After (and, I guess during) university, I worked as a waitress/barista to make ends meet. I wasn't really sure what I really wanted to do, and waiting tables enabled me to stay in the super awesome city where I went to school. One waitressing job led to another and now I'm five years out. I've had an internship and I'm a pretty regular freelancer at my local alt-weekly (I've even won awards for my writing, which I think is pretty snazzy). So I guess my question is this: How do I design a resume to reflect what colleges want to see? I'm aware of the styles of CVs that emphasize skills, but I sort of felt like half of it is made-up, BS stuff like "interpersonal skills" and "some Java." Also: I've been thinking about approaching my gap in scholastic endeavors in the Additional Information section, which usually allows you to explain weaknesses in your application. But here's my soapbox: I don't feel like my time away from university is a weakness. And I'm not talking about freelancing and internships, though those are definitely benefits to my time off (it would be, in my opinion, pretty stupid to go into J-school without having set foot in a newsroom). Is it a good idea to present this information in this way? Or should I just leave it unsaid? [i just deleted a whole paragraph about what a great education waiting tables has been. I can expand if someone decides that they're interested, but really: waiting tables, while not scholastic and certainly not intellectual in most senses of those words, has been an phenomenal incubator for a lot of my ideas about class, activism, the food-supply apparatus, social mores, labor and privilege. I have also gotten insanely good at people.]

I have a similar question to ntn1985! Scholarlypartier & Today12345: I had great relationships with my professors, but I was really terrible at keeping in contact. At least one gave me a reference for an internship I had two years ago (I graduated in 2009). But a few of the profs I contacted to be references never got back to me. Am I completely screwed by not keeping in contact with my professors? I had really fantastic relationships with more than a few, but I also had some pretty serious issues post-graduation that totally eclipsed any keeping-in-touch impulse I may have had. So, yeah, I guess: Am I screwed? What's the best way to ask if I haven't been, er, "on the radar"? (I'm also no longer in the same city I went to uni in... not even the same country, actually.)