The first time I tried to write an article for The Chronicle, then-sports editor Dan Carp placed the cursor above my entire story—a riveting men’s golf preview—hit “enter” five or six times, and abruptly said, “How about we start over?”
I had spent time and energy writing that men’s golf preview. It took a lot of courage to speak up in a meeting and say that I wanted to write the story in the first place—being a freshman in a room full of upperclassmen is intimidating, and being a freshwoman in a room full of literal upperclassmen can be downright terrifying.
Without launching into a longwinded commentary about what it’s like to have to defend myself as a female sports writer and fan, I’ll just say I was proud of myself for landing the story. I’ll also say I’ve grown to realize that Chron Sports is one of the few journalism outlets reporting women’s sports as more than just an afterthought, which is why I had a difficult time grasping accusations of sexism thrown at the only guys I’ve known to avidly follow men’s and women’s sports with equal enthusiasm.
So anyway, when Carp hit “enter” with an intention to scrap all of my hard work, I felt a whole collection of emotions: anger, frustration, sadness, confusion and shame.
And those are some of the same emotions I’ve been feeling recently as I prepare for graduation without a job awaiting me. But I feel plenty of other emotions as well: happiness, gratitude, enthusiasm and pride looking back on four years I never could have expected.
If you’ve met me, then you know I have a crippling inability to say no to things—unless I’m trying out for DUI, in which case I can’t seem to say anything other than “no,” thus breaking one of only two rules of improv and having an incredibly short career in the industry.
But the reason I found myself talking with a CAPS counselor freshman year about feeling overextended and overinvolved is the same reason I now have so much to cherish—I couldn’t say no to the opportunities Duke has to offer.
There are times when Duke students do find it easy to say no—when we’re being asked about something that doesn’t seem to directly benefit us. It’s hard to convince Duke students that their time is no more valuable than yours, that their stress is no greater, their pressures no more constraining.
So I wouldn’t advocate for sharing my crippling inability to say "no" because it can lead to getting taken advantage of, lessening the quality of what gets accomplished and—perhaps most disastrously—losing time that could have been spent napping. But I also challenge anyone reading this to reflect on passed-up opportunities that didn’t seem conventionally valuable—a friend’s presentation, a random trip to cookout or a movie marathon.
But wait—who am I to give advice? After four years of work-hard, play-hard effortless perfection at Duke, the universe is placing a metaphorical cursor above all of my hard work, pressing enter a few times and telling me to start over.
Freshman year, as I sat in 301 Flowers watching my words disappear down the page, Carp noticed my less-than-ecstatic expression. He told me that everyone went through the same process, and that no one writes a perfect sports article on Day One. His own stories still needed editing, as would all of the editors’ stories that succeeded him. I’ve even edited an article or two written by the talented Amrith Ramkumar—you might know him as a journalist extraordinaire, but I know him as role-model-best-friend hybrid I first met in my freshman dorm.
Carp and I rewrote my golf preview together, and probably only Duke head coach Jamie Green and my parents read it. If there’s one thing I’ve learned here, it's that the things you’ve worked the hardest on—and are the proudest of—probably aren’t recognized as such. For example, the email tenters received this year telling them their trivia score and position in line was the result of what I like to think of as highly sophisticated Google Spreadsheet code that allowed all 120 emails to be sent out in a matter of minutes. Humble brag.
So to revisit my cursor metaphor for what I can promise is the final time, I’d like to think I’m not completely starting over—after all, Carp didn’t delete my story, he kept it around for inspiration. And that’s exactly what I’m planning to do with my experiences at Duke, especially the people that defined them. You all might be scattering around the globe, but I’ll be keeping you around for inspiration.
Delaney is a Trinity senior and Sports associate editor. She would like to thank Chron Sports for welcoming her even though she initially intended to be a photog, not a writer. She would also like to thank Amrith and Pollack for four years of sports analysis, speculation and usually incorrect predictions.
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