I have never been one to ‘get involved.’ I’ve always just done the bare minimum.

Coming to the University of Massachusetts, I never had any intentions of joining any Registered Student Organizations (RSOs) or anything like that. When I came to The Daily Collegian my sophomore year, it was just a job for me. Three years later, it has basically consumed my life and I’m not that upset about it.

I don’t really know what to write in my senior column, mostly because it hasn’t really hit me that this is really the end.

Three years ago, I came down to The Collegian to apply for a position in the classified advertising department and got the job. I would read all the newspapers and chat with Marty Pappas, who was my boss in the classified department. She would sit with me all morning and talk about everything from current events to just random stuff in my life. It was Marty who I have to thank for pushing me to apply to be an advertising representative, which was one of the best decisions I have ever made.

In my second year at The Collegian, I was the Northampton and Springfield advertising representative with my partner, the one and only Brendan Cherry. That was a really fun year for me.

Every Friday, Cherry and I would walk up and down the streets of Northampton selling Collegian ads and we were pretty damn good at it. One day we even went to the local strip club to try and sell ads. Brendan and I walked into this place and sat down with the owner at the stage and gave him our whole bit and we killed it. This was one of our first big sales. We ended up selling more than $1,500 worth of ads to him, which the owner subsequently refused to pay for.

Later on in the year. I decided to apply for the advertising manager position. I got the job and hired Brendan as the assistant advertising manager. This was a crazy experience for me because I had never been a manager of anything before and all of a sudden I had a staff of eight. We had some really good times in the business room, though, and I can’t believe that it is already nine months later and I’m handing the reins over to Mike Tortorici.

I know this is very clich’eacute;, but I have a few people I would like to thank. First I would like to thank my staff this year. You guys really did a great job and the paper would not survive if it weren’t for you. Thank you to Stapes and the classified girls for making me laugh every morning with random notes, to-do lists, YouTube videos and for doing a great job and, believe me Nichole, I will teach you how to drive some day. Thank you to the Executive Business Manager, Mr. Alex Waszczuk for also making me laugh every day down in the office. You were quite the stress ball but you did a great job at keeping the paper afloat in this economy and I think we made a pretty good team.

And, of course, thanks to this year’s executive board for making things fun down here while at the same time keeping this paper on its feet.

I would also like to say good luck to my successor Mike Tortorici. You have an uphill battle ahead of you but I know you’ll do a great job.

Dan Hurley was the advertising manager at The Daily Collegian.