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Q. I'm a third-year in college, and just scored an internship at my first-choice paper on Friday. It's an alternative newsweekly based in Chicago -- one of the first in the country, actually, and is highly

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respected for its investigative journalism and cutting-edge cultural pieces. (Can you tell I'm excited?)

When I went in for interviews and proofreading tests, everyone around the office was wearing jeans, aviators and Converses. I've read in the past that you should wear business casual to internships, but I'd feel wildly overdressed. How should I dress for this internship? Should I just ask?

Planning for Success

A. Asking is good.

Observing, as you have, is good, too.

Joe Grimm

Here's a paragraph on just this subject, torn from the pages of "Breaking In: The JobsPage.com Guide to Newspaper Internships":

"Dress professionally. You can't go too far wrong if you are a little over-dressed on your first day. People will understand. Plus, you can sometimes take a little starch out of a starched collar. Lose the tie or jacket if you need to come down a notch. If you go in under-dressed, you will not be able to catch up. If your work will take you to formal places like courtrooms or corporate boardrooms, dress up. How sad it would be if you lost out on a good story because you were not dressed and ready to go."

And, congratulations on that internship!

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Coming Wednesday: Off and on for 25 years, he has tried unsuccessfully to move to a larger newspaper. He wonders whether it is just time to switch industries.

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