Mike Sager

 

Three weeks into law school, journalist Mike Sager sat on the hood of his car on the brink of tears. When his girlfriend’s sister found him, she encouraged him to quit.

“It really had never occurred to me that one could quit things,” he said. “This notion that you could start something and then not complete it was against the grain of what I was thinking then. But it was really a great lesson to learn, that sometimes it’s best to back up off the exit.”

Mike returned to a passion he had explored while studying history at Emory University: journalism. There, he had taken writing-heavy courses in English rhetoric and composition, creative writing, and history; he’d also been involved with several Emory publications and interned with Creative Loafing, Atlanta’s alt-weekly and the “most inspirational thing” Mike said he did at school.

“That’s what really gave me the bug,” he said of his time at Creative Loafing. “I was writing stuff and running around town and getting free meals and free beers and doing stuff and just having the best time of my life. And I just really thought, this is what I have to do to make a living.”

Soon after leaving law school, Mike failed a spelling and typing test at the Washington Post. “I wasn’t going to accept no for an answer,” he said.

His persistence landed him a copy boy job at the paper. He worked the graveyard shift in the wire room, tearing off news stories from 14 teleprinters and running them, sometimes literally, to the different news sections. After 11 months of working the graveyard shift and writing freelance pieces during the day, Mike was promoted to night police reporter by Bob Woodward.

“He made me a reporter, but there was no slot in the budget for me. I didn’t have a desk. I didn’t have a Rolodex. I didn’t have a name plate,” he said. He would stay on at the Washington Post for six years. “I learned how to do journalism the right way there.”

Highlights

Getting into college despite your grades: I was pretty surprised even to have gotten into college. I had a 2.8 average in high school and very low board scores, and I think the only thing that helped me get into Emory was my soccer playing...I made the varsity [team] my freshman year. That’s pretty much what I thought about. Just playing sports and taking the 101 subjects.

Advice for college students: Start getting internships as soon as you can...What you want to be doing is parlaying your excellence in college into getting these internships. That’s when those Greek letters and all those little things that you do, that’s when they work. [Extracurriculars] help you get internships.

A job or a passion: Most people have jobs, and a few people are lucky enough to have a quest. And I’ve always felt like telling myself, I just want to see how far I can go with this thing that I love. And I still tell myself that every day.

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