Story by Jason Strickland, Sports Editor—

As I write this, I sit here wearing my “Alumni in Training” T-shirt I got for free as a freshman.

I certainly didn’t accomplish much that year. I went to my easy intro classes and used the incredible amount of free time I had messing around and wasting time.

Fast forward to my senior year, and I wonder how I got done as much as I did.

I announced high school football and basketball games, wrote and edited stories for The

Muleskinner and helped webcast UCM sporting events with the UCM Media Network.

Oh yeah, I had that thing called class. I had 33 credit hours this year and will have two this summer to finish up.

I’m just glad I didn’t have another job like a lot of people do.

When first started college, I wouldn’t have thought I would have gotten as much hands-on experience as I have.

I didn’t start writing for the paper until my sophomore year, and I was only writing one story almost every week.

I think I’ve written two to three basically every week this past year.

At least I get paid to write about sports.

I came here to have a career that surrounded me by sports at all times, and I know I still want that.

After being a part of the UCM Media Network for two years and 1450 KOKO for one year, I found out I’d rather be a part of a broadcast team than write about sports.

But as long as I am getting paid to be at a sporting event, I’ll be happy with that.

I’m probably just as disappointed as the Mules baseball and Jennies softball seniors that so many games have been cancelled this season because of snow and rain.

Baseball is probably my favorite sport to broadcast, and I haven’t been able to do many games this spring.

I just hope we can webcast the regional tournament if the Mules host it like they did last season.

It would somewhat redeem what other seniors and I have lost.

The advice I would give freshmen and sophomores would be to get as much experience in your field of study as possible.

It will allow you to find out if that is really what you want to do, build your resume and be fun at the same time.

I will be doing an internship with the Sedalia Democrat and a practicum for digitalBURG.com this summer.

I don’t know what lies ahead after that, but I just hope I will be doing something I love to do.