"Never give up... don't ever give up"

There will be no mention of poisonous creatures wreaking havoc on airplanes in this post. No Samuel L. Jackson quotes. Not even a mention of them damn Tigers.

No, this will be a serious post about the state of my career.

For a few months now I've known that what Uncle Chuck suggested to me in that phone call four years ago was right. Chuck, a highly successful lawyer in Chicago, told me that it'd be easier for me to move up the ladder in just about any vocation if I attended the big, renowned college as opposed to a small, not-so-well-known school.

I listened to what Chuck had to say, and I strongly considered the University of Michigan - located in my wonderful hometown of Ann Arbor - up until the end. But instead of staying attached to my beloved Wolverines, I decided on Albion College, a small liberal arts college about an hour west of Ann Arbor.

In terms of my career, it was the wrong choice. No beef.

This is not to say Albion is a bad school. It is far from that, nationally renowned for its ability to place its graduates at admirable jobs. Rick Smith, the editor of Newsweek magazine, is an Albion alumn. It ain't a bad school academically.

But it wasn't the right fit for me, the aspiring sports journalist, the sports junky, the I-could-watch-and-read-about-sports-24-hours-a-day kid from Ann Arbor.

I picked Albion because I felt most comfortable there. I liked the campus, I liked the feel it gave off. I liked the meal plan, which was unlimited food between 7 and 7 every day (I was, am, and will always be a big eater).

But, unfortunately, my decision was not based upon where I saw four years at Albion getting me in terms of sports journalism. I did not consider enough the ramifications of there not being a journalism major at the school and the school paper being nothing but an itty, bitty weekly.

Let me tell you, what others and myself were able to do with the publication, The Pleiad, over just two and a half years was nothing short of amazing. The publication was in shambles when I joined its staff for good the second semester of my freshman year as the sports editor. The layout was odious, the articles contained several grammatical and factual errors. I was told later that one of the paper's writers the semester before I joined fabricated several of his articles.

The paper could have passed for "The National Enquirer."

But slowly and surely a dedicated group of us brought it to respectability. I was editor-in-chief for two semesters, managing editor for one semester, and sports editor every semester. With each semester, I noticed things that could make the layout more visually appealing. It improved dramatically. Ditto with the writing. And everything else. We switched from fake broadsheets to actual newsprint. We began printing color photos.

And, finally, last spring - after thousands of hours spent in the spacious Pleiad office - we put out the grandest of issues, a 12-pager with color on four pages that I might get framed one day.

So why, you ask, did I just say I made the wrong decision for my career? Why, considering all the success I brought to The Pleiad, should I have spent the past three and a half years somewhere else?

Because I never experienced a real newspaper feel in Albion. Because, writing about Division III sports, I never found anything controversial to write about - never anything tough to write about. Because, as a weekly publication, I never felt the pressure of deadlines. Because, I had exclusive rights to the coaches and athletes I interviewed. I could invite athletes up to the office. I didn't have to stand among a horde of reporters and shout out a question during the tiny laguna of silence after the interviewee finished their last answer.

It boils down to this: I didn't learn much about the actual business I so desire to enter, the daily newspaper service.

All that would have been different had I chose UM or MSU, both of which have daily student publications. True, if I had gone to UM, I wouldn't be in Australia now, but I'd likely be interviewing Lloyd Carr and Mike Hart, asking them about staying focused for Ball State on Saturday. I'd be writing columns about Lloyd turning the ship around and about Tommy Amaker needing to get the Wolverines to the Big Dance this March.

I'd be living the sports reporter's dream - covering big-time sports on a daily basis.

But I'm not, and I will move on.

The past two Decembers I applied for a very enticing sports journalism summer internship at the Detroit Free Press. I was rejected both times. I looked on the paper's website to see the breakdown of past interns, only to learn that every one of them has come from a Division I school. I'm not saying I would have gotten the internship if I'd been at UM or MSU, but my chances certainly would have been better.

Anyway, more to come on this later. All I can say for now is that I will get a good job in sports journalism. I will not be denied what I want to do the rest of my life. It'll happen, regardless of the obstacles stacked against me.

In the words of the late Jim Valvano, who led NC State to its improbable 1983 national championship, I'll "never give up."

It just won't be as easy as my decision four years ago should have been.