Hey this is just a test post...to get me on the contributors list...I'll delete it later.

It’s been my experience that these self-regarding goodbyes in a public forum are typically glossed over by non-participants, so I’ll try to make it short and to the point because I’m really only writing this for myself and for those who have a vested interest in Carolina Review.

As some of you know, I’m going to be abroad in the fall. Czech Republic. Prague. Where the beer is cheaper than water. And after thinking long and hard, I’ve decided not to come back to the Review next spring.

I am very thankful for the opportunities that Carolina Review has provided me. I would like to send a special thanks to Deb McCown. She was the editor two years ago when I was a freshman. I turned in my first article, an uninspiring book review of this thick thing by Rowan Scarborough about Donald Rumsfeld, and she promptly demolished it. For the first time, my unwavering self confidence in my ability to write was challenged. She had all these rules and standards, all these ideas for different directions to take the thoughts I’d already put down on the page. Well, two re-writes and countless copy-edits later, the article ran, in a form vastly improved than how I could have ever written it alone.

That was when I fell in love with the journalistic process: the back-and-forth between editor and writer, the fighting and the compromise, all of it leading to a holistic vision and a final product. Thank you, Deb. If it wasn’t for you and Carolina Review, it might have taken me much longer to discover this love, if I even discovered it at all.

I’m leaving the Review for two reasons. First, I feel it’s time to move on to something else. While I am extremely thankful for what this paper has given me thus far, I don’t believe the Review’s particular style of journalism has anything more to offer me in terms of learning about journalism as a craft. It’s a wonderful paper—one of, if not the best, magazines on campus—but it has inherent limitations based on its mission statement, which leads me directly into reason number two:

I’m simply no longer all that conservative. I’m not even all that liberal either. Moderate seems a cliché label to use, and what would be even more cliché is to throw up my hands and say I’m disenfranchised with politics in general. But I don’t have it any more figured out than anybody else. So sign me up for the Greatly Confused Party.

But along those same lines, I do feel as though there is a place for non-conservatives at Carolina Review, or at least, that there can be. I, however, am not willing to put in the extra effort required to work around this tension, which is what I had been doing for the last two semesters.

So this is my goodbye, my fare thee well, Custard’s Last Stand. I’ll still be lurking around the blog, and I worked it out with Brian so that I’ll still be able to post here from time to time. Thanks to everyone for the memories, and good luck to you all.

David
www.nostempore.net

LeBron hit his second game-winning shot of his playoff career tonight. In overtime. With 0.9 seconds left. Cutting through three defenders.

His other game-winner was in game 3, and now the Cavs are one win away from advancing (the series with Washington is 3-2). Maybe now the page 2 writers at ESPN.com will have to shutup, at least for a little while, about James not being able to take control of a game at the end. The kid has held up to his end of the hype amazingly well thus far. I know I sure as hell enjoy watching him play (even though I hate most everything else about the NBA's variety of basketball--especially by comparison to college), and a lot of the times I forget he's only 21 years old.

The NY Times posted an interesting article about James' impact on the city of Cleveland on Sunday. Tangentially, you can read the inferences about why James is good for basketball, more specifically, the NBA. Superstars like James and leadership like the one-year-removed-from-high-school rule, which NBA Commissioner David Stern worked with the Player's Association last year to pass, will lead to a healthier NBA. And we all want a healthier NBA because that leads to a healthier basketball in general. (And also makes it so we don't get whomped next time in the '08 Olympics).

But why should any of us (read: Carolina fans) care about this, you ask? It's easy to get self-sequestered in our own little world of ACC college basketball. We're pretty much the best basketball conference ever, regardless of what the Big East wonks want you to think. But the health of the sport in general has reflections and impacts on our little neck of the woods, too. If it weren't for that one-year rule, we certainly wouldn't be getting the blue-chip recruiting class we've got next season that's making most of the early pollsters put us at No. 2 behind Florida, this year's national champs who will return every major contributor except senior Adrian Moss.