If you scroll down far enough on my clips page, you’ll see a few articles I wrote for my college newspaper. I don’t honestly expect most prospective clients to scroll down that far, but I’m going to leave those links live, at least for the time being.

I started listing those college newspaper articles because — at the time — they were the best clips I had. I still think of at least one of the articles I wrote as pretty awesome and I’m proud to have it associated with my name. And the fact of the matter is that I just haven’t been out of college that long. I have a few clips from before I started working for the college newspaper — but they aren’t anything I really have any pride in. If I want to point a client to the fact that I really have been writing for publication for years, those college newspaper clips look a heck of a lot better than some of the ‘professional’ writing I was doing at the time.

I wouldn’t recommend leaving your college clips listed for the long-term unless you’re confident in their ability to sell a client or editor on your abilities, of course. And if you’ve got plenty of other clips and don’t need them to showcase your skills, at least giving your professional clips precedence will make you seem more focused on your career.

Personally, I’m figuring that I’ll get around to removing my college clips in a few years. Maybe. I really did enjoy some of the stories I got to work on for the college newspaper.