Farewell Column: Now I find I can't stop wanting

On the rare occasion I deep clean my childhood bedroom, I find random sticky notes with the same handwritten lines.

I wrote on these sticky notes at age 11, when I was obsessed with a scene from "Friday Night Lights," a show about a small, football-obsessed town in Texas. In it, Tyra Collette reads her college essay aloud on the eve of the Dillon Panthers' state championship game. Tyra never thought she would go to college, but with some guidance, she turned her life around. It's a typical character growth television moment, but three lines from her essay always stuck out to me. 

"I was afraid of wanting anything. I figured wanting would lead to trying, and trying would lead to failure. But now, I find I can't stop wanting."

I wrote these lines down time and time again. So much so that I find them crumbled in corners, tucked in drawers or in the depths of my closet almost a decade later. But since writing those lines down, they've become more than just a fictional essay. I've put these lines at the heart of everything I do. 

I'm afraid all the time.

I dreaded the moment I had to get out of the car to attend my small high school with less than 400 people. I cried every night for the first week of a summer program where I stayed only 30 minutes from my hometown at age 17. During my first year at UNC, my parents lived an hour away and I roomed with my best friend of the past seven years. Still, even with the close proximity, I thought about packing all my stuff up and leaving to return to my childhood bedroom. 

So, of course, when I sat down at The Daily Tar Heel Sports Desk orientation in the spring of 2023, I thought about running out of the room. My editors at the time — Hunter, Lucas and Shelby — tasked us with saying our favorite non-UNC related sports team. My school didn't have sports. The last full game I’d watched in at least five years was the UNC-Duke Final Four game in 2022. Naturally, my hands shook a little when they got to me. 

I said the Golden State Warriors. I hoped they didn't think I was a bandwagon.

But there are ways I got over this fear that threatened to make me stop doing anything altogether. As cliché as it sounds, like Tyra, I find I can't stop wanting.

My first story assignment came: write about athletes who couldn't play anymore due to injury. I interviewed UNC women's basketball guard Ariel Young. We talked for an hour in a random room in Carmichael Arena about her giving up the sport she played since she could remember. Young hugged and thanked me for writing her story. 

I had laid out my clothes beforehand. I was sweating during the interview. But something stirred in me. 

During my sophomore year, I traveled to a 40-year-old veteran's house alone to interview him about being the UNC ice hockey goalkeeper. I was so nervous I couldn't listen to music on the way there, but I left with the radio on full blast.

In the same random room in Carmichael where it all started, I learned to ask women's basketball head coach Courtney Banghart a question. Then, eventually, UNC men's basketball head coach Hubert Davis. I got on my first plane to Omaha, Neb., to report on the College World Series. Then Florida, New York and Wisconsin.

I'm still afraid every time I get on a plane. I have to touch the plane twice before entering it and pray before it takes off. My heart beats a little faster when it's my turn to ask a question. 

But the thing that pulses through me is this deep want to accomplish everything. I want to work at The Athletic. I want to be the best sportswriter of all time. Who says I can't be?

After listing her dreams, Tyra concludes the speech with this: "It's not that I think I am going to get all these things. I just want the possibility of getting them."

The Daily Tar Heel has given me that possibility. And even with the fear of moving on, I can't wait to see what I want next.

@_emmahmoon

@dthopinion | opinion@dailytarheel.com

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