Working at the Nexus has been a lot like my morning showers. I come in, the water is toasty, almost comforting – just like my first days working here. Then WHAM! I hear a blast and my shower stall has turned into a smoke-filled trench. Working and trudging to the office here has become a realization of the covenant I signed with Lucifer.

Yesterday morning, two of my roommates, Mathis and Lee, put an M-80 firecracker into a can of soy protein powder and lit it while I was hosing myself off. An explosion went off in the bathroom; everything was cloaked in about a 1 cm coat of rancid, white powdery mix including my towel, the toilet, the walls – everything.

When you start off, everything is rosy. Turn around in a couple of months and people glare at you menacingly as if you just cutoff the Pope on the 101.

Maybe that’s a bit extreme. I actually like work. Really.

I still can’t believe that I became a sports editor here during the first quarter of school. That’s a first. I remember my first night as an editor, all the way up from a lowly reporter. That’s another first. I just arrived at the office from a women’s basketball game in which the Chinese National Team whipped us at the T-Dome in a preseason game. Ted Anderson comes up to me and asks, you wanna be sports editor? I say yeah. Things get crazy from there on out.

This job is everything I expected and more. Talking with athletes, interacting with coaches and people involved in the programs, and even yapping with the fans has been a great experience. I have the best job in this country, working for the best college paper that I’ve ever read or heard of. This is the pinnacle. Nobody could ask for more.

Hell, I can’t believe I got a great beat two weeks after asking for something to cover. Covering women’s soccer was a thrill. Coach Paul Stumpf and Assistant Coach Michael Friesen were great at helping me better understand a sport I had little knowledge of or interest in at the time. That 2000 team got me hooked on the sport; there were not only some amazing athletes on that team, but the players were intelligent, nice and personable.

I would like to thank fellow sports editor Matt Heitner for saving my ass this year. Working with that crazy Albuquerque-native long-range bomber has been good; without him, there would probably be no Sports page.

Thanks also to all the athletes, coaches, students and fans at Santa Barbara. Everything, the good and the bad, made my year. More than anything else, this page is here for the people to read it. I want to invite the community voice to be a part of the Sports page next year. I will welcome anyone who sends me an editorial on anything they disagree with in another column, or if you want to talk about something that doesn’t get enough attention.

I want to invite you to be a part of the Sports page. I don’t want a select few of contributing people to make this page. I want everyone to be a part of it, because that’s what this is all about.

-Eliav Appelbaum is Sports Co-Editor with Matt Heitner, and will exact his revenge against Mathis and Lee. You punks are fucked.