When I was 20, I did something that taught me a very valuable lesson about public-facing imagery and individual responsibility whether or not you ever thought something you said or did would see the light of day.
I was a young idiot working in college athletic communications on a Saturday night, eager to finish a relatively benign story about the day’s track and field goings-on so I could get to the typical Saturday evening past time of drinking myself absolutely blind on rum and light beer. The trouble was, this particular meet was at Tennessee State, a program with a history at the time of not being terribly expedient when getting results emailed out to SIDs. This was around 2008—results reporting wasn’t as streamlined as it is now, there wasn’t a clearinghouse like TFRRS to hold anyone to a standard, it wasn’t uncommon to receive them from schools painfully after-the-fact, like Tuesday-for-a-Saturday event kind of late, and I don’t know why I’m telling you any of this or why you’d care.
So I typed up what I knew and waited for the rest. And waited. And waited.
And waited.
Time makes fools of us all, but I recall the results finally rolling in around 10:30 or 11 o’clock that night. I raced through putting the results to the story, emailed it to my boss for confirmation and proof, received said confirmation that it was good to go and posted the whole thing to the athletics website. Boring guy, boring night, pass the Miller Lite.
Except.