Senior Goodbye from Emily Babay | The real crime

When I applied for The Daily Pennsylvanian’s crime beat my freshman year, it was mostly because I wanted my stories on the front page.

I certainly got the front-page bylines I longed for by covering robberies and shootings around campus. And I learned a lot, becoming an expert on things I never expected to study when I enrolled at Penn, like local crime statistics and security procedures at courthouses.

But I’ve also gotten more out of covering crime and my experiences at the DP.

Put simply: I’m more appreciative. Writing about the worst experiences of people’s lives can make you pretty pessimistic (I say I’m a realist). But it also makes you immensely grateful. There’s nothing like writing about a student who tried to kill his neighbors or various professors’ years of court hearings to put problems like lack of sleep in perspective.

Covering incidents at all hours — and working with sources whose jobs require 24/7 responses — made me value my time. I no longer take for granted free time to go out with friends or read a book.

I also now know to embrace opportunities to try something new. Docket sheets and preliminary hearings were foreign terms when I joined the DP. But I wanted to cover exciting stories more than I feared the unknown. So a legal glossary became an often-used bookmark and I asked questions until I understood.

After I lost an election to be the DP’s managing editor, I became the online editor. It’s not the path I would have chosen, but it’s one that was more rewarding, personally and professionally, than I could have imagined. By leading the DP’s online operations, I turned a potential setback into a chance to grow, gaining multimedia skills and helping launch a new website. I’m better at handling disappointment and a better journalist as a result.

Facing tough material and situations has made me thankful for the people here. My bosses, staff and colleagues made long hours more than worth it and pushed me to be a better editor.

Most of all, I appreciate having something terribly difficult to leave. I wrote about people in situations they were longing to escape: jail, poverty, grief. That’s made me realize how fortunate I am to be both able and reluctant to move on. While I’m excited for my new job at a professional newspaper, I can’t stand the idea that this is the last time I will write for this paper.

I have slowly realized how lucky I’ve been to learn and work in a place like the DP. It became my home; the staff my family. No newsroom can replicate the reporters I supervised, the major stories I covered as a beginning journalist and the laughter and jokes in the production room.

You don’t have to be a reporter to make the realizations I have during my time at Penn. Pursue your passions, whatever they are. It’s okay to do things for egocentric reasons like I did with crime reporting; what you get out of an experience is more important than your reason for doing it. But to not take full advantage of your opportunities — well, that would be the real crime.

Emily Babay is a College senior from Erie, Pa. She is the former online and city news editor of the DP. Her e-mail address is emily@emilybabay.com. Emily is going to work as a reporter.

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