WAER grabs the rebound and sprints upcourt. The fast break might be on in the first minute of Media Cup 2023. As I stand at midcourt, I try to accelerate to catch up with a BDJ rival. Except there’s one issue.

I’m wearing a suit.

My dress shoes give way from underneath me like I’m in a Looney Toons cartoon and I crash to the floor. I get up right away, but as soon as I look down, I realize the damage. My suit pants have holes as big as tennis balls on both knees.

In my 30-second cameo as a starter – think Mikal Bridges in the Brooklyn Nets’ regular season finale to keep his consecutive start streak alive – I destroyed my nicest pair of pants beyond repair. And I bloodied my knees.

• • •

When I was in third grade, we had a class mascot, Tag, the stuffed tiger. My teacher, Mr. Peters, had us write a story about Tag for homework every couple weeks.

I would go on for page after page after page of my grand tales of Tag. One time, I wrote a play-by-play for an entire baseball game, played by Tag and his imaginary stuffed animal friends. Written in my third-grade scrawl and with no paragraph breaks, I turned in the longest stories Mr. Peters had ever seen.

• • •

I’m not really a quote person, but one that I really like comes from the book-turned-movie “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer.

The story follows a recent college grad, who, in pursuit of happiness and raw humanity, abandons his identity and tries to live alone in Alaska, subsisting off the earth. He dramatically comes to a conclusion:

“Happiness is only real when shared.”

• • •

I came to Syracuse eager to learn people’s stories and write about them, but the D.O. gave me the springboard to actually do it. It taught me to show rather than tell. It taught me to play around and see what I could make out of a story. It taught me how to run down something I was interested in.

I never used to think of myself as a D.O. kid. I didn’t get on a beat until my sophomore spring, wasn’t on staff until my junior spring, and wasn’t a senior staff writer until my senior spring. I hardly ever left the sports room, and yes, I was intimidated to enter management’s room my first semester in-house. There are times I wish I fought harder with my editors and there are stories I wish I wrote and positions I wish I held. But when you love something, it’s never going to be as simple as we like to say things are. I loved the D.O., and I wish I did even more with it.

I’ve always been an observant person. I like noticing what other people don’t. I take notes with pen and paper. I pay attention to the commercials. I remember people’s names, even when they don’t know mine. It’s this, combined with my love for people and discovering new things, that makes me love reporting. Because nuance is what makes us human. That’s what the D.O. taught me.

Not with a powerpoint, or a teacher holding my hand, but with a midweek or a coverage at SU Soccer Stadium. The D.O. taught me to be a better reporter through organic discovery.

Now here’s where we’ll circle back to that quote. “Happiness is only real when shared.” Above anything else, the D.O. taught me that my love for people was real, and real enough to want to do this for a living. Not just for shared experiences, but also new ones. Experiences I never would have dreamed of with people I couldn’t have dreamed of doing them with.

It’s interesting how much tense can play a role in how we perceive things. Before sitting down to write this, I had been pushing off the thought of graduation, trying my best not to think about it. But when I thought of the line, “Connor Pignatello was a senior staff writer for The Daily Orange, where his column will no longer appear,” that’s when it truly hit.

I won’t have any more cigarette-smelling Budgetel rooms or frantic scorecard posts or Crane-files at the D.O. But that’s the beauty of it all. I’ll keep what the D.O. taught me – 800 words in 45 minutes – and I’ll keep the memories; ripped pants, stolen mac boards and all.

— 30 —

Connor Pignatello was a senior staff writer for The Daily Orange, where his column will no longer appear. He can be reached at connorpignatello@gmail.com and on Twitter @c_pignatello.

Published on April 27, 2023 at 1:16 am

Contact Connor: cpignate@syr.edu