My first interaction with The Cavalier Daily staff was sending them drawings that could have been done by a 12-year-old. When the Graphics department awarded me with a comic strip, the editor Jane Mattimoe told me I exhibited promise rather than outright talent. I’d like to think I proved her correct, and I’m forever grateful for that decision. Working here has been the most rewarding experience of my time at this University, and it came about largely as a series of unexpected turns like that one.
When I first joined The Cavalier Daily, it certainly didn’t seem like something that could yield a career. It was mostly a creative outlet in between tedious introductory engineering classes. Maybe eventually I’d get good enough at drawing to cultivate a minor following and create the next xkcd, as a fallback in case this whole “Computer Science” thing fell through.
Looking back, it’s hard to imagine I had some hesitation in becoming Graphics Editor that year. But Jane, along with Jack Winthrop and Garret Madjic, taught me that the reason you stayed on the paper was for the people. I met Krista Pedersen, a kindred spirit who became my unofficial career councilor, and later Caroline Houck, who could brighten even the darkest of late nights in the office.
The office became a place where I could always find a friend. It felt like more of a home than any apartment, and over the years I treated it as such. I received the ever-prestigious “Pink Flamingo” award for making the office a fun place to work, which remains the only thing still framed on my wall.
Eventually I was able to offer more substantive support to my peers tackling large community issues, which gave me a connection to this University I couldn’t have found anywhere else. It felt like I was adding a personal contribution to the dialogue with my own online content to support the fray of breaking news coverage. I’ve had the honor of writing, editing, producing and publishing content at The Cavalier Daily, but nothing felt more engaging than the discussions in the office with some of the most informed people on Grounds about what was happening around us.
In my third year, I took on another role I hardly anticipated. Groucho Marx said that he didn’t care to belong to any club that would have him as a member. Maybe I should’ve had more concern for joining the leadership of an organization that elected a cartoonist as Chief Financial Officer. But for all the problems The Cavalier Daily had, maintaining itself as a financially independent business was the biggest, and I knew I would never regret a minute of my time working to stabilize an institution that had given me so many opportunities.
Our greatest weakness is staff turnover, which makes marketing, accounting and business relations remarkably more difficult for a new group of students every year. We made plenty of mistakes and missed plenty of opportunities, but my peers always managed to amaze me with how much progress we could make on so many undertakings. Thanks to the work of Kirsten Steuber, Sascha Oswald, Allison Xu and others, I’m more optimistic than ever about the future of the paper.
I’m most thankful my unorthodox career allowed me to meet some absolutely extraordinary people. Katherine Ripley knew exactly what needed to be said when it mattered — we couldn’t have had a better voice for our term. The stalwart Rebecca Lim kept us calm and collected, and Thrisha Potluri was my confidant through it all. Special thanks go to Andrew Elliott, for being an excellent motivator and an amazing friend.
The result of all of these improbable turns in my time at The Cavalier Daily is the realization of what I can do. A year and a half ago I was panicking about having to manage the finances of the largest student-run company at the University. Now I wish I had another year at it, because by the end I finally knew what I was doing. But that’s the way it works: you do the thing that terrifies you, and the courage comes afterwards.
Peter Simonsen was the 125th Chief Financial Officer of The Cavalier Daily.
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