During my final night as editor-in-chief of The Miami Student, we achieved a rarity.
We were ahead of schedule.
By 11 p.m., almost everyone had gone home. Only a handful worked from the Armstrong Student Center newsroom anyway due to capacity restrictions imposed by COVID-19’s arrival 12 months earlier.
It was odd.
The four remaining seniors — Managing Editors Julia Arwine and Emily Dattilo, Campus and Community Editor Duard Headley and myself — knew exactly what to do. We approved the proofs and queued up “Closing Time” by Semisonic, which had become an end-of-production-night ritual, just as we had for years at that point.
But we also had no clue how to process it being the last moment of our lives at The Student.
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We lingered for a few minutes before snapping a selfie and heading uptown to O’Pub for a celebratory beer and some reminiscing about the previous four years, which began together in a first-year writing scholars class and ended, well, this chilly night in March 2021.
What a four years they were.
***
I couldn’t believe it.
As an 18-year-old during my third weekend of college, I walked into the press box at Yager Stadium and took my seat. I barely knew my way around campus, much less how to cover its most popular sport.
For some reason, The Student trusted me to write a recap of the football game. It was my first assignment, and it was the moment I knew I made the correct decision.
Growing up in Cincinnati, I dreamed of attending the Ohio State University (OSU). I chose Miami University for the scholarship money, homey feel and opportunities of being one of 18,000 students instead of 60,000.
At OSU, I wouldn’t have covered football until my junior year, if I was lucky. In Oxford, I did it in my first month.
I signed up for The Miami Student on my first day of classes. Within weeks, I served as volleyball beat writer and backup football reporter.
Eventually, I rose to assistant sports editor and sports editor. Toward the end of my junior year, right as COVI-19 shuttered the world, the staff elected me editor-in-chief.
We made the best of that unusual period.
My favorite times, though, occurred during my sophomore and junior years. It’s when The Student truly transformed campus into my home.
My best friends resided on staff — my beat partners, Brady Pfister and Bennett Wise; my sports editor, Emily Simanskis; staffers Anna Minton, Samantha Brunn, Ceili Doyle, Kate Rigazio and so many others.
The Student staffers were always together.
I traveled to Hinkle Fieldhouse, Ohio Stadium and Paul Brown Stadium to cover Miami games, all with a teammate by my side. We wandered to Detroit to witness the RedHawks win a MAC football championship in 2019. We trekked to Mobile, Alabama, for a bowl game and stayed in a hotel way too ritzy for college kids on the organization’s dime (I’m still shocked business manager Bea Newberry never scolded us for that bill).
I chronicled huge wins and crushing losses. I interviewed poetry-writing basketball players and NBA Hall of Famers. I sat in courtrooms and received a couple nasty emails.
Trial by fire.
I didn’t want it any other way.
***
Every journalism job I’ve ever gotten sprouted from The Miami Student.
My internship at the Oxford Observer? I pursued it after picking the brain of a fellow staffer who’d done it the previous summer.
My freelance gig covering preps for Chatterbox Sports? Their owner contacted me after noticing my stories on The Student’s website.
My time as a contributor for Sports Illustrated’s Falcon Report? It came via an offer from Terence Moore, then-Miami professor and a legendary alum of The Student.
Once I graduated, I moved to Wyoming to become the sports editor of The Sheridan Press. The person I replaced? Emily Simanskis, who put in a good word for me.
After 11 months, I migrated back to the Eastern time zone to join the Daytona Beach News-Journal. Another Moore connection helped me through the door.
At all those stops, I used skills I learned at The Student… but it’s the people I think of most.
I often recall that first football game next to Brady and our numerous adventures afterward. I’ll never forget the editorial meetings and staff parties, the newsroom tomfoolery and reactions to the awards we won. I smile whenever I hear “Closing Time.”
The lyrics state, “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”
It rings true. We couldn’t stay. But after four years, we didn’t need to.
And the song doesn’t say anything about coming back to visit.
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