The Observer is kind of like something you eat like a dog when you first get into it. And then after some time, you realize it tastes like s---. But by now, you are into it, and it has become your own little baby to take care of. You now run a department and have a senior thesis to write. Only now there are, as a law of nature, new dogs — energetic freshmen — eating away. And when you get to graduation, you realize that they aren’t eating away at your baby, but they’re eating away at your s---. And good for them. God bless energetic underclassmen.
I am being melodramatic — what you can use is description. You don’t want to know why you are reading The Observer if you have already chosen to read it. You want to know what The Observer can tell you.
The Observer’s office was always a good place to show somebody you wanted to impress. It has been narrated many times in Viewpoint’s inside columns, but it is harder to describe it: I can only try.
Located in the basement of South Dining Hall, its only neighbors were the women’s restroom to the west and the pungent 10-urinal men’s room to the east. Walking in, you would see an uneventful ad office to the right and Deb’s desk and the editor-in-chief’s office to the left. A few more steps, though, and you would have seen the room we worked in.
We often said we worked at “the paper,” and our office always reflected that. Prior to the moving process, at least 80% of the wall was covered in paper. Old clippings, notes, pictures and copies of our paper filled the space. The hodgepodge of computer desks was always layered with template drafts, and you could always spot a few empty Diet Coke cans in the room.
The room was big, both spacious and cramped with rolling chairs: First was the Viewpoint computer, and hence the space we thought of as “the Viewpoint section.” News was always, while I was a student, caved away to their left. To Viewpoint’s right was the printer. Behind Viewpoint was Scene. Behind the printer was the Top Five desk, where your mistakes sometimes got caught, and other times you got to go home early. Behind Scene was Sports — people I honestly never, except for Tyler Reidy, thought to be very interesting.
There was no door to the next room over, an equally large room where we almost never worked, but almost always met. The table layout here would shift around, but there were always very old editions of the Irish Insider lining the inside wall. On the opposite wall, there was a “sex couch” (though I had never heard of anything happening there, for all you eyebrow raisers) and a supposedly sacred whiteboard and more Insiders. There was a water cooler, a (free) coffee machine, snacks in one corner of the room and the photography office in the other, which was next to the musty AME office.
I always thought the AME office had an exciting abundance of random s---. I once found a recording device with interviews from a decade ago stored on it. There was no juicy or sexy reporting — it sounded about as boring as all the interviews I ever conducted. But it was cool and historical to me. It made my use of Otter.ai transcription services feel like cheating. I also took a table from that office once, which I’ve used for a bookshelf/coffee table concoction in my Alumni Hall single. Finally, there was a water gun that I once sprayed directly at Andrew Marciano’s ear.
There was always so much in the office — it is one of those places I would be happy to continue describing and rambling about to anyone who would care to listen.
There is no “typical” Observer experience, however, partly because the sections all favor different types of employees. But the reality is that the paper will find a job for you if you are crazy enough to commit to it.
And I’m glad I was. The Observer has been a cool place to work. I’ve met cool people in that nasty office, readers of worldly things and basking in all the pretentiousness that comes with it. I’ve enjoyed getting to know Peter, Peter, Peter and Ryan Peters, the “proud father” of our current editor-in-chief. I’ve enjoyed making a fool out of myself whenever production shifts got awkwardly quiet. And I’ve enjoyed the sense of purpose I experienced working as a student journalist.
To tell you the truth, I’m not sure if I served The Observer as much as it served me. Every job interviewer and friend has heard me talk about it.
Yet to describe it, I must say simply that it takes the work of hungry dogs to keep this paper going, even though the result is sometimes less a cute and shiny newborn baby than its soiled diaper. But The Observer will test you and your limits, even if you are Isa Sheikh.
So, for those stressed-out scriveners who will carry this paper in perpetuity, listen up, pups. I have one imperative: stay hungry. It’ll serve well both you and our collective s---.
Liam Price is a senior from Lambertville, New Jersey, graduating with majors in political science and English. Next year, you can find him teaching ninth grade English in Philadelphia through the St. Joseph’s University ACE program. You can contact Liam at lprice3@nd.edu.
