Just a regular day on the job

By Brittany Benjamin

You know what's embarrassing? I've met Fr. Engh four times this year -- and he still can't remember my name.

An ingenious journalism professor once said, "As a reporter, you've doing your job well if you interview a person one day and he doesn't recognize you passing you on the street the next day."

Either I have an abnormally easy face to forget, or I did something right in my run-ins with University President Michael Engh, S.J.

Reporters are supposed to emerge from the shadows when they're needed, but then seamlessly dissolve back into obscurity after an assignment is finished.

I can honestly say after four years with TSC, I've learned what it means to be a reporter.

I've met dozens of people who I've interviewed one day, but they didn't recognize me walking across campus the following morning.

I've covered everything from Jeopardy! winners to non-affiliate males partaking in unmentionable acts in the library.

Let's just say I've been around the block.

I've had my fair share of covering bizarre events on campus. And for my last issue with TSC, I reflected back on my last four years on the school newspaper and have emerged with a list of my most telling moments as a reporter -- my Jeff Foxworthy "You might be a reporter if..." inventory.

You might be a reporter if: you see a running lawn mower sitting unattended in front of the Jesuit residence and you think, "Huh, that's a Campus Safety Report waiting to happen."

You might be a reporter if: you're wearing your pajamas and standing on somebody else's lawn staring at a car that's driven through their front gate.

You might be a reporter if: you sink down into your seat in class as a professor and students start to passionately bash a story from this week's TSC -- that you wrote.

You might be a reporter if: you're dancing in Club Bronco on a Saturday night after a few drinks and walk outside to encounter 20 cops, several of which have their hands on their guns. Despite inebriation, you try to drunkenly coerce the story out of them anyway.

You might be a reporter if: you've seen somebody knighted for becoming a sports editor.

You might be a reporter if: Campus Safety knows your name and avoids your calls.

You might be a reporter if: you've met Fr. Engh four times and still aren't surprised when he asks for your name again and without blinking you tell him, "It's Alyssa."