I SOLD my soul to The Cavalier Daily pretty early on in my college life. It wasn't a conscious decision. I was actually headed down to the Newcomb basement to write for a paper called The Declaration when I passed by The Cavalier Daily. Before I knew it, I had gotten into what would turn out to be a continuous fight over who was better, the Yankees or the Red Sox, with the then sports editor. (Sean, if you are reading this online, your team is not only behind the Red Sox, but also the Orioles. If that's not an admission of defeat, I don't know what is.)
One of the nice things about working for Sports is that rather than sitting in a windowless basement five hours a day, warmed only by the soft glow of the computer screen and muted florescent lights, you are actually outside, watching real human beings move around and absorbing huge quantities of vitamin D.
I will forever be grateful for the experience working in Sports gave me. It's one thing to love sports, to follow sports, to become completely dedicated to a team. It's quite another to get to know each of the individual players on a team, to talk to the coaches, to understand exactly what a certain game means, emotionally, to the team as a whole, and to fully comprehend all the work that goes into each and every match. On the whole, athletes get a pretty bad rap at the University. Certainly, some of them are very well earned. Most, however, are not. I have met plenty of athletes who hold close to a 4.0 GPA, work their guts out for their team, and still find time for a few light extra-curriculars on the side. You guys make me sick. It's a shame that their hard work gets overshadowed by say (and I'm just putting this out of the realm of the hypothetical here) athletes who commit credit card theft and fraud.
Of course, I've had my regrets over the years. Covering baseball my first year, I never quite had the courage to ask Ryan Zimmerman a question that, in my head, ran something like this, "So Ryan, that was a really great grab you made to get us out of that jamb in the bottom of the fifth, will you marry me?" Additionally, the sports page has never, ever (and this very much includes when I was editing) figured out a way to get the layout and story distribution to work out so that every team can get the coverage it deserves. Even though I'll probably receive a thousand e-mails from other teams that felt they were also gypped, I'm going to take this space to send a huge apology out to the women's crew team. They are currently ranked third in the Nation, and they have never been properly acknowledged for that.
However, everything taken into account, working for the CD has been the best experiences in my time at college, and I suspect it will turn out to be one of the best of my life as a whole. Working in the Opinion section has brought me new adventures, such as laying low in a car after pushing quite a few emergency buttons on blue phones, waiting for the police to show up and thinking how I would explain to my mother that I was in serious need of bail for committing a felony -- fortunately for me and my subsequent column, the cops never showed. I've made some of the greatest friends I will ever have through this paper and met some of the most interesting people I will ever find.
My second year, covering women's soccer, I was able to attend the ACC championships when the University took on UNC. In the press box with me were reporters from professional papers all over Virginia and North Carolina. Looking around the room I suddenly realized I could work my whole life and potentially never reach where I was that day. It's an interesting feeling to know you've peaked at 19. But if I had to peak at 19, I couldn't have picked a better way.
Margaret Sessa-Hawkins's column appeared Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at msessahawkins@cavalierdaily.com.
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