By Ian Murphy
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I’ve junked and started this column more than three times now. There might be a fourth.
I wanted to tell you my journey. I started school as a math major and swimmer at a regional university in Illinois. That would take too long.
I wanted to give several thank-yous. To my dad for encouraging me to take Advanced English in high school. To my mom for picking me up 12 hours after my last final at Eastern Illinois and dropping me off at the University of Iowa six weeks later.
To a then-stranger, now my friend and roommate Brent, who pulled me in off the figurative street into The Daily Iowan. To Stacey Murray, who hired me as a Metro reporter and never once accepted mediocrity. To my roommate and best friend Nile, who has kept me around since kindergarten and looked after me when I transferred to Iowa.
Thank you to Publisher Bill Casey, for being a mentor and giving us the resources to cover Big Ten and NCAA Tournaments.
Thanking all of the people who affected me in my time at Iowa and the DI would take too long, too. Just look at those three grafs. They are 130 of the 550 words I will get for this column.
I would need infinitely more to thank my friends, family, and everyone else I have met and worked with at the UI.
I tossed around the idea of telling you what I would tell myself four years ago. Stand up for what you believe in, Ian. Start school at Iowa, Ian, you’ll have more fun, anyway. It’s OK to say no, Ian.
You’ve read those a hundred times on Buzzfeed, or the Odyssey, or someplace such as that.
I could tell you about my favorite games, and interviews, and experiences. I have answers to all of those. The game was the Iowa baseball team’s walk-off-win over Minnesota at the Big Ten Tournament in 2015.
The interview is Iowa baseball coach Rick Heller, who will answer your first question, and several after it, before you even get a chance to ask.
Experience, as a former college swimmer, would have to be covering the men’s NCAA Championships, where I got to put my two passions together.
But, I admit it. I don’t know what I want to write about for the first time in my two and a half years at the DI.
I’ve pitched stories every week I have fleshed out and given at least some thought to. I’ve written 1,500-3,000 word stories and had more sense of direction from beginning to end than I do with this column.
I’ve made a lot of memories, done a lot of cool things, and owe more people thank yous than I could count. To ask me to give my parting thoughts or offer lessons or thank everyone at the DI would require an entire page.
To do it in 550 words is so much harder.
I don’t like goodbyes; there is never a good time for them. I don’t like change, but I cannot stop time. As I have done often throughout my college career, and I did with the end of this column, I’ll figure things out as I go.