The New York Review of Magazines comes out once a year, at the end of the second semester of Columbia grad J-school's magazine concentration. The 15 or so students in the course should all operate under the assumption (illusion?) that they will, upon completion of this course, get wonderful editorial assistant positions at Serious Magazines, like Esquire. Or the New Yorker! Or perhaps that's what they secretly dream; the crowd gathered at the Essex restaurant on the Lower East Side (take the 1 from 116th and B'way to 14th St., transfer to the F) last night seemed defensively glum about their prospects. Except for the ones who already had jobs, of course! That one is working at the New York Observer; this one at the Columbia Journalism Review; and that other one for one of those fashion trade mags.