Jennifer Knightstep
Jennifer Knightstep was a researcher in the media archives at General Motors until she was laid off in 2008. Her first reaction was fear.
“I panicked for a few minutes, and then I tried to think of what I wanted to do next,” she says. “There’s not a big demand for archivists in Metro Detroit or anywhere else for that matter.”
So instead of trying to get a similar job, Knightstep decided to go in a new direction.
“I thought maybe I should start trying to do what I really wanted to do, which was be a writer.”
When she filed for unemployment, she learned about No Worker Left Behind, a program in Michigan that offered up to $10,000 in tuition for degrees in emerging industries. NWLB was scaled back in 2010 following federal funding cuts.
When most people think about growing fields, freelance writing is not the first job that comes to mind, but Knightstep made it work.