I’ve stopped counting how many times a kindly adult has given me career advice.

Suddenly, it is totally appropriate for some people to dissuade me from my chosen profession using vague statistics and laughable logic. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if I were to mention to somebody I had just met that accounting was a dying profession due to the invention of the calculator, would that not be similarly rude?

I’m fully aware of the challenges facing the journalism industry, thank you so much for mentioning them, but there are more effective ways to give meaningful advice.

Here are just a handful of the absurd things I’ve been told. Never say them to a journalism student.

“Oh, you know that’s a dying industry, right?”

Someone struck up a conversation with me at a recent street fair in a Chicago suburb. He asked me about my college major. My response was journalism. And his response was that delightful gem. I politely told him, “Well, it’s changing more so than dying.” And FYI, nearly 5,000 new jobs have been created in the past few years thanks to new digital startups.

“The future of journalism? It doesn’t look good.”

This came from a nationally acclaimed journalist who spoke recently at my journalism school. My response? Maybe it doesn’t look good for him. But Melanie Stone, a journalism major from DePaul University, who wrote an article entitled, “Why I’m Majoring in Journalism Even Though Everyone Tells Me I Shouldn’t,” sees it differently.

“Things are improving for the media industry,” Stone wrote in her article, published in October of 2013. “In PayScale’s most recent wage index, media and publishing jobs experienced the biggest wage growth over the past 12 months, according to Business Insider. That category grew 3.9%, compared with 2.3% wage growth among people working in information technology.”

Why aren’t the professors and speakers citing these and other reassuring statistics when asked about the state of the industry? Wouldn’t these cold, hard facts be more useful than dour faces and sour words?

“Hahahahahaha!”

This was the response I heard from someone at my grandmother’s 90th birthday party when I said I was majoring in journalism. Yup. I got laughed at. And then the person walked away. On an unrelated note: I also wish people would stop asking me why I’m not married yet.

“You should probably learn technical writing.”

In class, I kept my mouth shut, but in my heart I knew I would rather chew on bricks than write for Construction Today.  I want to be a food writer. Why do people keep telling me that’s not an option? Why don’t we talk about cool, under-the-radar publications like the Lucky Peach or artistic powerhouses like Saveur? That sounds like a lot more fun to me than Caulking Weekly.

“Be well-rounded. That’s how you will get jobs.”

This is another one I’ve heard in my journalism school. While I’m fine with learning photography, and in fact I really enjoy it, I don’t want to do broadcast journalism. Don’t force me into it. I am awkward on camera and watching myself on film depresses me. What I want to do is write about food: cooking it, eating it, ordering it, growing it, feeding it to others. I’m a woman obsessed. Shameless plug, by the way, if you want to read any of my (more than slightly) vinegary work, check out my food blog Bite Me. But seriously, how will learning how to shoot and edit video help me with food writing? It won’t.

“I hope you’re not in it for the money.”

I hear this from everyone, all the time. Of course I’m not in it for the money. According to a Buzzfeed ranking of the lowest-paying jobs that require a degree, a reporter or correspondent weighed in at a meager $36,000 salary, and this is not news to me. I’m in it for the places I want to travel, for the people I want to meet, for the restaurants I want to discover. I’ve already had the chance to interview several famous food writers thanks to my journalism school, and how many people can say that?

To be fair, I’ve heard some things from my professors and mentors that I absolutely love. Here are a few:

“Get ready for a long hard slog. It will be hard for you to find jobs.”

I heard this from one of my professors, who accompanied the declaration with a package of resources: websites to search for journalism jobs like Mediabistro, a list of things you should never ask on an interview (like how much vacation time you’ll get or when you can move to New York City), a list of things you should always ask on an interview (what was the best thing you learned from your first job?), the names of people in the industry who may be willing to talk to us. Yeah, it scared the crap out of me, but at least I had a roadmap to navigate it.

“You’re never going to see more than you will as a journalist.”

A writing professor had this message, along with stories of her life: She was on Capitol Hill when 9/11 happened and she wrote about the Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash, just to name two of the stories she covered. Her class inspired me to see and experience whatever the field of journalism throws at me.

“I can’t wait to read your writing.”

I heard this once from a rabbi’s wife in Florida.

Now that’s what I want to hear.