It's tough to excel, but I managed

I have a lot of exceptional talents in a lot of different areas,
and when I first came to UCLA I just knew there had to be a place,
somewhere on campus, where my skills for leaving voice mails, going
to meetings and writing captions for photos of bearded conference
speakers would be of use.

Fortunately, there was such a place: the Daily Bruin!

At long last, these skills of mine would be put to use. But not
right away. I had to let my voice-mail-leaving and
meeting-attending skills develop before I could bring them out to
play.

First, I was a photographer. I was fairly scared of the photo
editors my first year, but I don’t think they were scared of
me. They were never very liberal with their praise, but
that’s OK because I don’t think I was very liberal in
taking good photos.

The highlight had to be when I, on assignment to photograph UCLA
basketball superstar Jason Kapono, pulled him away from Fox Sports
West, led him up and out of Pauley Pavilion, and proceeded to take
10 of the worst photos ever taken of anyone. We would have been far
better off asking him to e-mail us his 10 best drinking photos for
the story.

No worries, though. Flash forward a year and a half. After some
time away, I triumphantly returned to the Bruin, working there in
the same era as the great photographer Peter Varshavsky. Together,
we covered the news as it had never been covered before. Well,
Peter covered the news as it had never been covered before. I
managed to amuse the new editors, mostly by making fun of
Harnish.

After negotiating a handsome salary for myself (somewhere in the
area of 43 cents per day). I signed on as the new assistant photo
editor at the end of last year. I knew I had big shoes to fill, so
I bought bigger ones.

My coeditor was to be the diminutive but mighty Lisa Cates. Lisa
was a perennial force around the tennis beat and a proud holder of
a 19 Premiere meal plan. She made it clear that though I was older,
had more experience and was taller than her, she was the boss.

I never questioned it for a second, especially since if I lost
her support, I would surely lose my Premiere access to never-ending
pasta and free soda at the De Neve dining hall. I toughed it
out.

The bottom line is that I’m almost out of space, but Daily
Bruin, and especially Lisa Cates and all of Viewpoint, except
Harold, I will definitely miss you next year.

This also particularly goes to the DB photographers. Though I
complained, I now feel ready to leave even longer voice mails,
attend even more frequent meetings and write ever more fanciful
photo captions.

If you like attending long meetings, e-mail Taylor at
[email protected].