I'm not going to lie to you.
Seeing your name, and sometimes even your picture, on the back page of a newspaper above something you wrote is a great thrill -- one that is tough to top.
And it's no lie that covering sports is great fun, especially when it's a Penn team involved. There are few things better than watching baseball in the stands at Penn's Murphy Field with a notebook and a Coke, keeping score and taking notes late on a beautiful spring afternoon, the kind which Ernie Banks knew were made for doubleheaders.
Likewise, nothing beats a crisp fall Saturday in the press box at Franklin Field -- even with that golden autumn sun blinding you -- unless it's covering a real nailbiter down at the Palestra, all the while trying to keep your inner fan from crawling out through your mouth and screaming in some guttural tongue.
But there is another reason I will so fondly remember working for DPOSTM -- The Daily Pennsylvanian's Only Staff That Matters -- a different reason entirely.
One of my best friends, Jesse Spector, helped me become involved at the DP during our sophomore year. I had often thought about joining the paper, but probably would have never strode into the paper's "Pink Palace" at 4015 Walnut without his encouragement.
Once there, I met the sports section's two editors, Rick Haggerty and Eric Moskowitz. Eventually, the two became my friends, and as their year at the helm gave way to the Spector-Haggerty-Will Ulrich triumvirate, I found myself spending an awful lot of my free time at the DP, hanging out in DPOSTM's office with editors and scribes after checking in a story.
We would often talk long into the night, as ironic wish fulfillment-based humor -- inspired by the 1997 Andrew Divoff opus, Wishmaster -- and the repeated, often desperate search for someone with hair constituted the order of the day. I was given a DPOSTM nickname -- "R" -- one which fully exploited my real name's similarity to that of a certain bumping and grinding troubadour.
There were other hijinks and shenanigans along the way. I'll put it this way -- you had to be there.
Thinking back to those halcyon days, I realize what I've known all along -- that having your work and your fellow writers' work read by thousands of people does not in itself make DPOSTM special. Even covering sports, which is why we are here and which we do very well, is paramount in the grand scheme of things.
In this life, you are ultimately judged by the company you keep. And if you have friends, then all of the features, columns and game stories in the world don't add up to a hill of beans in comparison.
For me, it is the people behind the men's basketball columns and the women's lacrosse game stories of this world that have made all the difference. If I hadn't enjoyed being around the people I've worked with for three years -- within and without DPOSTM -- you probably wouldn't be reading this column today.
The members of DPOSTM, in particular, share a bond that other sections of the DP don't have. It is a bond forged with road trips to New Hampshire's delectable Chicken Hutch during a Penn team's visit to Harvard and/or Dartmouth, basketball games against the would-be Bob Costases and Howard Cosells of UTV Sports, and gridiron demolitions of teams scraped together from the dregs of the rest of the paper -- a.k.a., the Weenies.
These were the people who understood and supported me when I decided I couldn't make the commitment to editing the section. We know how to push each other's buttons, we know how to make one another laugh and we help each other out, whether it be with writing or with life. We have a good time and we take pride in a product of incomparable quality.
True, DPOSTM isn't the only staff that matters at the DP. Everybody works hard and does a great job, from the editorial side of the paper to the business side.
We just make DPOSTM matter more. We're not just co-workers and colleagues. We're friends.
So, Haggs, Moskowitz, Will, Spector, Sub, Mrs. Potter, McLaughlin, the two Kyles, Boss, Zeitlin, Tuch, Costello, Lance, McQuade!, Dubes, Feng, Emily, Andy, Hindo and everybody else -- thanks for being there, thanks for being my friends, and, above all, thanks for being DPOSTM.
Ryan "R" Kelly is a 2002 College graduate from Old Brookville, N.Y.
