MY FIRST attempt to work for The Cavalier Daily was met with quick and merciless rejection. I called the office asking if The Cavalier Daily needed a food critic, thinking that, if I phrased my request just right, I could get a job that paid me to eat and write. The woman who answered the phone laughed and suggested that since I was clearly unqualified to be food critic, I should try out to be an Opinion columnist.
My first few columns for the Opinion section were, as my editor then put it, "awful." I began my writing career thinking that whoever could squeeze the most syllables into the fewest sentences won. As you can probably imagine, my first swipes at greatness included words like "protofascist" and "shibboleth" -- words even people who work for The New Yorker hesitate to use in conversation. At the time, indecipherability seemed like an integral part of good writing.
After having written several "perfect examples of what not to do as a columnist," as my editor began to call my work, I started to feel more comfortable committing my thoughts to paper, which let me shed some of my pretenses and, finally, write as I thought. My editor, whom everyone respected as one of the most talented writers at the paper, finally admitted that my work had improved to "acceptable, but weird," which, from him, seemed the best compliment a writer could receive.
Less than a year later, the staff elected me as executive editor and my former editor, Herb Ladley, as The Cavalier Daily's 118th editor-in-chief. Now my job included the not-so-simple task of synthesizing the opinions of the Managing Board into a coherent, cohesive 500-word daily editorial.
Imagine gathering five of your smartest, most passionate friends and asking their opinion on a controversial issue like the single sanction. See if you can encapsulate their opinions in 500 words without anyone feeling left out. Lead editorials usually reflect consensus, which means the words you read on the page reflect hours of argument and research, compiled during interviews and private, off-the-record conversations. Much like making sausages and negotiating legislation, the process of producing lead editorials is best left unseen.
When I moved from a weekly column to writing a lead editorial every day, one thing became clear. Much like those con men you learn about on shows like 60 Minutes, serving on the Managing Board required maintaining two families. On the one hand, I had my friends and housemates -- my biological family -- who offered nothing but support and friendship on the weekends and the scarce hours I spent sleeping or retrieving food from my kitchen. On the other hand, I had my foster family.
Herb, the squirrelly father figure and editor-in-chief, presided over a Managing Board that quickly became a tight-knit tribe, complete with all the dysfunction and violence befitting any good family. Meggie was the lovable, demented, brilliant younger sister studying to be a rocket scientist who had a bizarre fixation with tea and beef bouillon. Visitors sometimes witnessed Meggie sprinting the entire length of the office either to repair the copier or to fire the entire Graphics staff, depending on her mood and the state of her supply of tea.
Everyone has at least one older cousin who always seems smarter, more successful, more mature and competent than everyone else -- the one visiting relatives always hug first. That was Caroline. On more than one occasion, Caroline burst into my office with a copy of my editorial in hand, with all the parts she thought sounded stupid circled in red Sharpie. And she was always right. On more than one occasion, that damn red Sharpie saved me from appearing unspeakably ignorant in the minds of our readers.
And Elizabeth, The Cavalier Daily's new editor-in-chief, embodied the motherly role -- "Momma," as I'm sure she'd style herself. When, after a particularly stressful day at the office, my lead editorial would appear littered with profanity and obscene jokes -- like the one about Student Council entitled "Bureaucratic flustercuck" -- Elizabeth was always the one to remind me to relax, put down my glass and rewrite it.
Partly in an attempt to resist writing this column as an Academy Award acceptance speech, I realize I've written all this without thanking any of the dozens of people who helped and supported me this year. I'll spare readers the laundry list, but a few people deserve special recognition (most noticeably the people who control my GPA, which only recently recovered from its yearlong nosedive).
Professors Michael Smith and Larry Sabato afforded me far more trust and generosity than I deserved, and both were kind enough never to remind me of it. Instead of complaining about my somnambulant presence in class, they offered thoughtful guidance. Instead of yelling at me for arriving late to yet another seminar, they went out of their way to help.
The University has plenty of good teachers, but great mentors are few and far between. I found at least two on the faculty and, thanks to my work for The Cavalier Daily, I found another on the Managing Board.
On my final day as executive editor, I handed Herb a copy of our last editorial. "I hate it," he said, keeping with tradition. "I hate it because I wish I had written it, and because this is exactly the editorial I would have written."
That was the second-best compliment a writer could receive.
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