When I went to The Daily’s fall open house in late September of my freshman year, I walked in as a hopeful writer for the news section. Instead, I left as a sports journalist.

Coming into Stanford, I wanted to be a journalist specializing in domestic politics or international affairs. That’s what seemed to be the most legitimate form of journalism to me, and I felt a sense of duty to tell people the information they needed to know so they could be more aware of the world around them and make informed decisions.

Yet at the open house — as I talked with this past volume’s editor-in-chief, who was at the time the sports editor herself, and as she told me about the incredible experiences she had covering Stanford sports — it occurred to me that doing so would combine two of my favorite things: journalism and sports. Sounds fun, might as well give it a shot.

From that moment forward, I had forever sold my soul to The Daily, the sports section and the world of sports.

For most people, sports serve as an escape from the real world, something to watch after work or school or on the weekends, but over the past six months, I’ve become more and more interested in making a career out of sports, particularly sports journalism.

For a while, I fought against this idea. Sports are fun, sure, but they’re so trivial compared to everything else that could receive — and deserves — attention from the media: What about the presidential races and wars, the state of the economy and the nature of our diplomatic relations with various countries? What about the stuff that actually, you know, matters?

At the end of the day, sports sure as hell matter. They bring people, cities, even entire countries together. They give us something and someone to believe in. They push the limits of what we deem the human body capable of, leaving us in awe in the process.

But not only do sports matter to fans and to the athletes themselves, but, perhaps most importantly, they matter to me.

Four beats, dozens of bylines and hundreds of hours of editing later — a year and a half after first walking into The Daily’s open house — I can confidently say that nothing I have encountered so far has made me feel as alive as when I cover sports: when I was on the live radio call as Stanford women’s basketball upset No. 1 UConn last November (if you fast-forward to 0:40 of this video, you can see me in a white blouse jumping up and down from the courtside table — I repeat, during a live broadcast); when I covered Stanford women’s water polo’s second straight national championship, and its fourth in five years, and considered jumping into the pool when we won (don’t worry, I didn’t end up doing it); when I danced in the confetti after the football team won the Pac-12 Championship and later the Rose Bowl; when I had the opportunity to cover the men’s soccer team from the beginning of the season to the very end, where I stood in the rain at Kansas City’s Sporting Park and watched the squad hoist the NCAA trophy after winning the program’s first national title.

For me, this is enough. In fact, it’s more than enough. It’s exactly where I want to be.

At Stanford, there’s constant pressure to come up with the next big thing, to save the world and often to follow lucrative career paths. We define success by how others view us, but rarely by how we view ourselves and how what we do makes us feel.

In such an environment, it’s easy to forget that life’s too short to not do what you love. But that is exactly what I remind myself when I hear that nagging voice in my head telling me my hopeful career is insignificant, that I’ll hardly make any money while some of my peers have six-figure starting salaries and that sports are trivial in and of themselves — and it’s what I want those reading this column, and those who have watched me struggle through my past few months of editorship, to take away.

When all is said and done — with Stanford, with our professional careers and even with life — we’re not going to remember all the things we did or didn’t do; instead, we’re going to treasure how what we did made us feel. And if one day I can look back on my life and know that I’ve found a way to replicate what I’ve felt in Maples Pavilion and at Avery Aquatic Center, at Levi’s Stadium and the Rose Bowl, at Cagan Stadium and Sporting Park and especially at The Daily office, I think I’ll be able to say I truly was able to live.

 

Ask Alexa about her Daily withdrawals at aphil723 ‘at’ stanford.edu.