How am I even supposed to start this? How am I supposed to take the last four years and distill them down to 450-500 words?
How do I accurately describe the sheer panic felt when someone who had never been away from their home for more than a day was suddenly on their own for the first time?
I can’t, and so I’m not even going to try. Instead, I’ll focus on what came after that.
Less than a week after I arrived on the Hilltop, I gathered every ounce of courage I had (not all that much) and fired off an email to Julie Kindinger. Julie was, until this past December, the Coordinator of Creative Production for the Bradley Athletics Department. She was looking for people to join Braves Vision, and even though I had about as much experience running a camera as I did attending college classes at that point, she hired me for some reason.
I’ve been employed at the Athletics Department all four years on Bradley’s campus, which made that column I wrote in January about the lack of changes in the department interesting, to say the least.
Other than that, my time working for Braves Vision has been fantastic. I’ve had the chance to “work” for ESPN, I’ve had the pleasure of broadcasting baseball and softball games the last two years, and I’ve met a ton of fantastic people I hope to continue calling my friends for the rest of my life.
But if Braves Vision dominated my first two years on campus, The Scout took over the last two.
I always tried to remain as unbiased as I could when covering Bradley’s athletic teams. I knew when I accepted the job in November 2013 that I had a choice to make. I never really considered myself a journalist, and I still don’t, but I decided that night that regardless of what happened down the road, I would try to cover the teams as impartially and as best as I could because I owed that to you, the readers. I’d like to think I’ve accomplished that.
That said, did I expect the athletic director, president and men’s basketball coach to all leave or announce they were leaving within a two-month window? No, but, you know, things happen.
And they all happened so fast I know I would’ve gone absolutely insane if it weren’t for my friends. So, to start the list of thank-yous, I thank my friends for making me laugh when I didn’t want to or for making me work when all I wanted to do was watch Bobby Parker break records on Madden.
I thank Julie for taking a chance on me and giving me the great opportunities I mentioned earlier, and I thank Vickie Berkow, last year’s editor-in-chief, for hiring me even though I had absolutely no writing experience at all.
I’d also like to thank Terry Knight again for showing me that I could, in fact, write a little bit. None of this would have been possible if it weren’t for her COM 215 class my sophomore year.
The entire Slane College of Communications and Fine Arts gets a thank you as well. There is no better place on campus, although the Foster College of Business gets a nod too. Both of those places have been great to me, and I’m extremely proud to say I went to the Charley Steiner School of Sports Communication, although maybe when we name the Television Arts program after the janitor from Scrubs we could use a classroom? Maybe?
And finally, a special thank-you to the University Hall elevator for not killing me when it randomly dropped to the basement on my birthday my sophomore year. That was cool of you.
I’ll never say “I was proud to be a Bradley Brave,” because that’s not true. Instead, if I’m asked, I’ll say “I am proud to be a Bradley Brave” because I will always be a part of this university, and it will always be a part of me.
Thank you, Bradley.
