It really is funny how time flies. I don’t think any of us realize how little time we have left at a particular station in life until it’s right upon us – and now, with unemployment pending and graduation in a few weeks, I’m starting to realize that myself.
Perhaps the thing I’ve liked the most about working at The News is the people I’ve gotten to work with. When I was hired as Opinion Editor in April 2012, there was only one member on staff that I could honestly describe as a friend, and that was the guy whose job I was taking! Now, I can name just about everyone on staff and have made lifelong friends as a result. But none of them have been as special to me as Savannah Sawyer, who you may know as our Features Editor – and who I know as the love of my life.
I first met Savannah about a year ago, a few weeks into the Fall 2012 semester. She was Assistant Features Editor then, and hadn’t said a single word to me until I mentioned to her that I liked her desktop background — at the time a picture of Bruce Springsteen.
Little did I know that those few words would eventually lead to she and I spending time in Chicago together (a city that I had never dreamed of going to at the time), introducing her to her very first video game or spending a week at Devil’s Lake in Wisconsin (a place I’d never even heard of).
If I had to say we had a matchmaker, I’d say it was part Bruce Springsteen, and part the folks at The News; our both being fans of Springsteen opened the door for conversation, and those conversations eventually helped me to get to know Savannah better and vice versa.
The constant pushing and questioning by our friends at The News, who wanted to see us happy and together, probably had a role in getting us together, too.
All of it kind of came together one night for me. The News went to Chicago last year to attend the College Media Convention and I (unsurprisingly) made sure that I’d be riding with Savannah on our midnight ride from Wilson Hall to the Windy City. I’d not brought my headphones with me and so, to drown out the noise in the car and catch some shut-eye, Savannah and I shared a pair of headphones and listened to the set list for the Springsteen concert she’d gone to earlier that year. It’s hard for me to say that there’s not a Springsteen song, at this point, that doesn’t make me think of her. But there is one that instantly sends me back to that night – “Out in the Streets.”
I’m not sure if it was because I had heard it or because the song fit what we were about to do so well, but this song, no matter where I’m at, takes me back to that night. It takes me back to being crammed into a Suburban, with one headphone in my right ear, one in her left ear and her head on my chest. It never gets old. It’s not our only song, either. I think we have about 20 songs to ourselves at this point. But none of them give me that same feeling as “Out in the Streets” does.
Now, as both of us graduate and go out into the street ourselves, we won’t be going it alone — and it’s all thanks to The News. And maybe The Boss, too.
Column by Devin Griggs, Opinion Editor