The main thing that I remember from my first Voice meeting is that I arrived late and there were no empty seats available. Luckily in the corner sat a fat stack of chairs, and so I picked one up stealthily enough to disrupt the meeting as little as possible, only to throw the entire stack off balance and nearly send all of the chairs tumbling to the floor. My aforementioned stealth caught the chairs before absolute disaster happened, but, try as I might, I could not get them to stay upright on their own. And so I plopped my chair down and spent the whole meeting with one hand casually resting on an unstable stack of chairs that seemed to be one wind’s breath away from collapsing into a noisy pile of rubble on the floor.
This is the other thing I remember from that meeting: Sports editor Luca Powell accepted my pitch. I was an unsure freshman still coping with the trauma of the chairs, and he an experienced sophomore with a firm grasp on how things worked. To “get more involved” with the “Conn community,” I thought that writing for the paper would be a good idea, since I had done it for a bit in high school. I had always loved watching and reading about sports, but I didn’t want to interview anyone. So I came to the meeting with the crazy idea of writing a preview of the Major League Baseball season. Of course, I didn’t want to speak up as editors pitched ideas, so I approached Luca after and asked with voice trembling if that idea would be acceptable. Very calmly, he said “Yeah, of course. Why not?”
Beforehand, I had thought of a million reasons why not—the editors probably wanted an article specific to Conn, no one would care about my opinion on baseball, the topic wasn’t interesting enough. But that approval set the angry moths fluttering around in my stomach at ease. Maybe I could do this.
Then it was my sophomore spring. I had written a few articles for the Sports section, and at one of the year’s last meetings, Dana Sorkin asked if I would want to be a Sports editor for the next year. I’ve never thought of myself as a take-charge kind of person, so being an editor wasn’t for me. I knew that. So I stumbled over a few excuses as to why I wouldn’t be able to do it. Dana said she would send me an application anyway, in case I changed my mind.
Since I’m writing this editorial, most likely the last thing that I will ever write for The College Voice, it should be no surprise that I did change my mind, filled out the application, was accepted, and have been an editor for a year and a half. I think it would be stupid to use this as a lesson for the reader, because I am in no position to give people advice. It is purely a reflection, and I am lucky enough to have the space to write one. But I will say this—there are always a million reasons not to do something. I was fortunate to have Luca and Dana on my side, and to work with Dylan Steiner and Allie Marculitis as editors. I’m not a risk taker, and I’m not telling the reader to be one either, but taking risks is a lot easier when the right people are around you.
-Peter
