Unsure of what I was getting myself into, I signed on to the
Daily Bruin Sports staff.
I hate to admit it, but I didn’t realize what being a
sports writer at the Daily Bruin amounted to. It’s pretty
hardcore here; we even have a grad student groupie who sneaks by
office security every day to bring us breaking news.
After the summer months, I am still hesitant as to whether this
line of work is really my thing. At least with the year-long
commitment, come June I’ll definitely know for certain if
sports editing is in my future.
I am largely living in a man’s world. Sure, Title IX has
evened out the gender of sporting teams, but nothing has been done
in the Daily Bruin Sports section. The guys I work with have an
unfair advantage. While they were praised for watching Monday Night
Football with dad, I was out being a girl ““ which rarely
included watching professional sports.
Granted, I made it to a few Giants games as a child, and I
religiously watch the Super Bowl, but I just don’t have time
to devote to watching sports if I want to maintain my aura of
daintiness.
It’s not as though my parents would stop me from watching
professional sports as a child; it was as though, at that point,
society would not give me consent to spend my free time watching
sports. I had better things to do (or so I thought), such as
playing with Barbies and practicing my makeup application.
You never saw girls on the Nerf commercials, playing catch with
Dad; it was always little boys.
In a way, I blame the American entertainment industry for my
complete lack of knowledge of professional sports.
Watching the NFL illustrated to me that I could work hard to
become a cheerleader, aside from the fact that after eight years of
dance class I still had trouble pirouetting.
Luckily, I am writing for a collegiate newspaper that spends the
majority of its pages discussing UCLA events. Now this I can deal
with. I may not have the entire defensive line memorized, but I can
name off some key contributors. Also, I get to cover sports such as
men’s water polo.
Don’t pretend, ladies, that watching the men’s water
polo team is not in its own way a little perk of growing up with
dolls instead of the NBA Playoffs.
The joke around the Sports section is that I will contribute by
cleaning the office or baking cookies, leaving the heavy-duty
sports stuff to the guys.
But they’ll see. You don’t need a wealth of
professional sports knowledge to be successful, just access to
Wikipedia and some ingenuity.
Who knows ““ maybe my pirouetting may even come in
handy at some point.
E-mail Erin at ewagner@media.ucla.edu if you know less about
sports than she does.