I struggle to find a more difficult moment in my life than the one in the waiting room of the Daily Bruin on April 6, 2012.
I sat staring at my cell phone trying to cry but not having the ability to do so. I was numb. I was angry. I was embarrassed.
All I wanted to do was smash that phone into an unrecognizable pile of glass and plastic and microchips so I would never have to make the hardest phone call of my life.
I knew that breaking my phone wouldn’t change the outcome, so I just sat there working up the courage to break the news to my mother that I had not been selected for editor in chief.
My parents were the only ones who really knew how much the paper meant to me. They were there when I made my college decision after walking out of the Daily Bruin office for the first time as a senior in high school.
They knew how much it killed me to do internships while I was the sports editor because it meant that I couldn’t spend every waking second I had inside that windowless cavern we call a newsroom.
They were the ones I argued with when I told them that I wanted to be editor in chief despite it being a poor career move for my aspirations in sports journalism.
So I sat in that waiting room, shaking uncontrollably, as I hit the mobile number for my mother. She answered immediately and before she could even say hello, I said, “I didn’t get it.”
There was a calm silence before she started consoling me and telling me how proud she was. All I could say back was, “I loved this paper so much.”
It was at that moment when a line from Adele’s “Someone Like You” popped into my head.
“Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead.”
A smile came across my face; the irony was too perfect not to laugh.
Throughout my time as a sports editor, I incessantly listened to that song at such a rate that a collective groan from the office was inevitable whenever the initial piano solo started to play.
That song was my anthem for my entire year as an editor and it ended up personifying my relationship with the Bruin.
The love that I felt for the paper and the people in it warped into pain and dejection, but I grew and learned from those experiences more than anything else in my life. And as I sit here now writing this column, Adele’s words say it best: “Nothing compares, no worries or cares. Regrets and mistakes they’re memories made. Who would have known how bittersweet this would taste?”
Ruffman was sports senior staff from 2012-2013, sports editor from 2011-2012, sports contributor from 2010-2011 and video contributor from 2009-2010.