- R. Nelly
As seen in the Daily Illini New Student Edition!
Exactly one year ago, this brown-eyed guy received the Daily Illini New Student Edition in the mail. After completing a dunk on his crooked, black rim barely hanging from a 9 ½-foot backboard, he dribbled his scuffed Spalding Infusion basketball to the mailbox beside his street. The letter came in a large, brown paper envelope.
After taking one quick look, the 17-year-old boy didn’t want to read it. Heck, it was summer. Nothing in black ink was going to give him advice about real college life. He was living in full color.
The “college experience” was something he figured he would have to learn himself. He was sick and tired of all the advice people were trying to give him. Plus he was lazy. It was still summer.
He turned his head for another quick look, read the first couple headlines and threw it in the trash. Back to his basketball game.
Dude didn’t even use the recycling.
*****
Exactly 10 months and 14 days ago, this brown-eyed guy received an application from the Daily Illini. Of course, he had to get it himself. If he wanted something, he couldn’t just wait for it to show up in his mailbox. He was living on his own now.
The guy filled out his information and returned it to the secretary. Pretty simple. She filed it away with a gargantuan stack of at least a hundred others. Maybe not so simple.
A couple weeks and nothing. He wrote emails and frequented the Illini Media building. He made phone calls. Still, it felt like he was making no progress.
Finally, an editor told him, because of his persistence, she might be able to move his name up the list to attend an upcoming developmental meeting. Her promise held true, and the paper invited him to a developmental meeting in early October. Awesome.
They talked about leads, quotes, good and bad sources, the elements of news. He didn’t hear the rest because he must have fallen asleep a couple times before the two hours were up. He learned it all in high school anyway.
He was then a developmental writer, nothing more. If he wanted to write, it would have to be a report about “intramural sports” twice a week.
With a job as a news reporter at the WPGU-FM 107.1, an and accelerating course load and a complete lack of enthusiasm for his beat…
The guy with the brown eyes dumped the job he worked so hard to get.
*****
Exactly eight months and 10 days ago, this brown-eyed guy received a firm tap on the shoulder. The 18-year-old put away his phone and turned around to see who it was. It looked as though he might have to leave the Ubben Basketball Complex, the men’s basketball team’s practice facility.
He was just warming up from the cold.
“Coach McClain wants to know who let you in here.” The voice came from a couple inches above. A manager for the men’s basketball team was talking to the young man.
“Oh, Kent Brown said it was cool,” he replied, wishing he was given a bit more than his modest 5 feet and 10 inches. The boy felt relieved. He wasn’t going to be leaving after all. He was a fledgling journalist…without an assignment. Just a vision of the future. And a basketball team to watch.
It was the night before the big game. No. 3 Illini vs. No. 1
The Illini had something big in mind for Chris Paul and the Demon Deacons, and they expected an even bigger margin of victory.
That’s why Assistant Coach Wayne McClain had to make sure a special somebody wasn’t taking pictures.
*****
Exactly 9 months and seven days ago, this brown-eyed guy received an email. One of many he received daily now that he was at the
It was quite simple.
The sports director at the NBC-affiliated television station in
Um, freshman and none. Send reply. Information sent. Electrons go flying.
And stop.
The sports director doesn’t return a message. No one with less than junior status has ever interned at NBC.
*****
Exactly eight months and two days ago, this brown-eyed guy received froma card a graduate journalism student. It was the
There were about as many students as teachers at the nighttime event.
The guy with the brown eyes just finished giving an interview to the grad student who was covering the event. The grad student so happened to have more connections than a community cable box.
In the interview, he told the grad student about his dreams and aspirations. The grad student said he would try to hook him up, and they were off on their separate paths. A couple follow up emails and friendly reminders later, the electrons appeared in his inbox.
The brown eyes had to blink a couple times before he could believe it. He thought he would never see this name again. He opened the email and read the message:
“Are you still interested in that internship?”
*****
Exactly four months and 19 days ago, this brown-eyed guy received a free pre-game meal from Assembly Hall. He spoke with NBC Chicago’s Ryan Baker and WDWS-AM 1400 radio analyst and former Illini basketball point guard Steve Bardo as they ate their Italian beef sandwiches and potato chips.
Afterward, he watched the Illini play Purdue from the Assembly Hall floor with the media. In the last regular season home game – the men’s basketball team’s senior night – Dee Brown lit up the crowd, making 8-of-10 threes – an Assembly Hall record for 3-point baskets.
After the game, he was in the press room listening to Brown, Deron Williams and Coach Bruce Weber talk about the 84-50 thrashing of the Boilermakers.
Oh, what an NBC badge can do.
*****
Exactly one day ago, this brown-eyed guy received a train ticket to
They had auditions for the main role in the new movie, Home of the Giants, starting Haley Joel Osment. Claire Simon Casting.
They were supposed to play stud basketball players.
The brown-eyed guy tried out for the basketball team in seventh grade and missed the final cut. His brother tried out for the team every year since seventh grade and never made it past the first.
This would have to be some great acting.
Three hours, two bus tickets and a couple city blocks later, he got his chance. It seemed like he had to swallow a Monarch before entering the casting studio. Trying to play it cool, he let the seventh grade incident slip when asked about his basketball experience.
“So tell us your basketball experience.”
“Well, I’ve been playing basketball ever since I was old enough to dribble the ball.”
All right. Keep it cool. Make sure your voice doesn’t crack.
“In seventh grade, I tried out for the basketball team and was cut. I never tried out for the team again.”
Oh, shoot! That’s worse than Laurence Olivier saying he had stage fright! Quick, try to salvage the situation.
“But, um, I’ve been playing…uh…park district basketball and YMCA basket—“
“Okay, thanks.”
What was he trying to be, the next big movie star?
*****
And here is this brown-eyed guy. Present. Receiving nothing but thoughts. 9:50 p.m. He dribbles his scuffed Spalding Infusion basketball outside his house – the one from which he moved away not even a year ago.
Light from the dim yellow streetlamp glistens off his skin. Even in the dark of the night, the goal is very visible.
He plays the only game that’s always there. No matter the time of day, year or place. It’s omnipresent. He plays basketball to make sense of life. And looking at his crooked, black rim barely hanging from a 9 ½-foot backboard, he thinks back at all his trials, tribulations and triumphs in the past year.
He puts up shot after shot. Ugly CLANG after deafening CLUNK! “It seems like the entire world isn’t seeing me like I want it to.”
His sagging blue and orange U of I shorts stop the ball as he tries to send it through his legs. Sweat drips and stings his brown eyes. “I’ve taken my chances, being rejected more times this past year than I have in my entire life.”
He hops over the yellow caution tape in front of his newly paved driveway to retrieve what was supposed to be an easy free throw. “Even my lift isn’t the same.”
Taking a few steps back on the sidewalk, behind where new concrete meets old, dry grass, he focuses on the rim. He’s ready to take off. “This insatiable instinct to succeed wasn’t here a year ago. What’s gotten into me?”
A couple bounces off the ground and his bare feet set into motion. Each step quicker and quicker. Only his toes touch the concrete. He takes the ball in one hand. And rises.
“I spent a year at the
He puts it down with ease and continues to sail onto the grass behind the goal. The 18-year-old smiles. “Guess I’m still the same person after all.”
One year at the University did NOT tell him more about the U of I than what the Daily Illini New Student Edition said last year. One year at the University changed him and gave him the will to take advantage and learn from new opportunities.
Exactly one year later, he is prepared for all his failures as well as his successes. Exactly, one year later, he knows who he is as a person.
Exactly one year later, this brown-eyed guy is writing in the Daily Illini New Student Edition.
