In four years worth of appearances on the pages of this newspaper, I've had the good fortune to publish some worthwhile stuff that has frankly made me proud. Those fruitful efforts notwithstanding, as I sit down to dash off last thoughts on my time at the DP, I can't help but think back to the most boneheaded mistake I ever made beneath a byline.
It was February 2000, and I was a shade over two months into my one-year tenure as sports editor. I wrote a column Tuesday night about the Penn men's basketball team's troubles with taking care of the ball.
The gist of the piece was true. In the Harvard-Dartmouth road trip completed the previous weekend, Penn had turned it over in destructive spots so my anecdotal discussion of the games stood up.
Still, down near the bottom of the column, I decided I needed to add a stat. It was late at night when I settled on one I found on the Internet. I told the readers of my column that Penn was 13th-worst in the country at turning the ball over. Then we put the paper the bed and I soon followed suit.
When I arrived in the office the next day, Rick Haggerty, the senior sports editor, gave me the bad news. I had gotten the stat dead wrong. Penn wasn't the 13th-worst in the nation at cough-ups; the Quakers were 13th-best. We had missed the error in editing the page the night before, but Penn coach Fran Dunphy hadn't missed it when he read the paper in his office. Coach Dunphy had called for me earlier in the afternoon, and I had to call him back.
Dunphy is a real class act, and his talk with me on the phone indicated that once again. Instead of reaming me out, the coach calmly talked with me about the flub. He knew I wasn't an idiot, and he knew I wasn't reckless with my opinion.
Right before he got off the phone, he told me something that sticks with me now.
"You're young, and this is the time when you should make your mistakes," he said.
I learned an important lesson from that errant factoid. I learned to stay on my toes in the office, to double-check every fact that crossed my desk. What I realize now is that this lesson was just one of many that my involvement with this newspaper taught me.
Assuming a major role at the DP places you in a kind of crucible, one that challenges your abilities on a host of fronts. Here I had to constantly work under deadline. I had to work long hours with people I disliked. I had to learn how to start writing academic papers at 3:30 a.m. and finish, as my grandfather would say, before breakfast.
My response to these challenges will endure with me as I move away from West Philly, but that only tells half the story. The other half is the people -- the talented and masochistic folks who have made my time at Penn fuller than it would have been otherwise.
I've shared countless great laughs at the DP. I guess when you combine minor exhaustion, C-grade pizza and a few bad apples with sick senses of humor, hilarity can't help but ensue. Some of those with whom I laughed became my friends, some very dear indeed.
But I'm being too general, this column is my Fraunces Tavern so I should be saying goodbye to the troops, to the people who have worked most closely alongside me.
Josh Callahan, Kent Malmros and Marc Edelman were my first editors, and they helped hone my writing from the get-go. Perhaps equally as important as their guidance was the confidence they showed in me. Both as a writer and later as an editor, I found that mature trust in your colleagues is one of the best motivating tools.
Dan Tenenblatt did me the honor of giving me a DPOSTM nickname while his partner in the sports office, Eric Moskowitz, gave me a great example of what it meant to pour yourself into the task at hand. Eric has a great knack for feeling what is compelling and human at the heart of a story, even though he's often too tired to let somebody else know.
When I was sports editor, I worked hard, but never as hard as my two partners, Jesse Spector and Rick Haggerty. I always felt calm in the office because I had those two to lean on. I wish these two friends the best of luck as they do the real work of sports journalism.
My immediate successors in the sports office -- Boss, Zeitlin, Jessica and Kyle -- kept firm control over what can often be a shaky ship, and the current trio of Amy, D-Mac and Lance seem prepared for more of the same.
I'm probably never again going to work at a newspaper, so one might think all the time and effort I gave to the DP was misguided. If you've made it this far down this column, I hope you understand why my time with this newspaper was certainly no mistake.
Will "Staples" Ulrich is a 2002 College graduate from The Bronx, N.Y., and former Daily Pennsylvanian Sports Editor.
