I arrived on AU’s campus at the age of 17 in August 1989, having recently graduated from a high school in rural Nebraska. I’d soon learn the sons of Vidal Sassoon and Ted Koppel were in my class, along with the grandson of former Vice President Hubert Humphrey. My classmates arrived with something called Advanced Placement credits; AP classes weren’t even offered at my high school. This was decades before “imposter syndrome” was a thing. I was determined to make the most of my experience; I was soon elected president of the freshman class, thanks in large part to painted “Vote for Ann” old bedsheets — that my mom and dad sent from their hotel in Salina, Kansas — hanging from the windows of Anderson and Letts Halls.
Naivety is a virtue.
It wasn’t until I started comparing class schedules with my dorm mates on the second floor of Anderson that I had that “oh no, what am I doing here” moment. I had Freshman English three days a week but my friends had it only two. I soon found out that my SAT score was so low that I was deemed in need of the remedial English section. They didn’t call it that, but that’s what it was. And it turned out to be one of my favorite classes in college. The professor had a knack for getting us to be able to express ourselves through our writing. I remember writing an essay about whether a car was required for the expression of teenage freedom. My position was that it was not. Little did I know then that three years later I’d be taking a Greyhound bus back to Union Station at 3 a.m. after going with Jenny Cook, my friend and editor at The Eagle, to read poetry on Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday at midnight at the church where he is buried in Baltimore, Maryland. Who needs a car?
At age 53, as a published author and attorney, I ask myself, “What was it that empowered that gal who was assigned to the remedial freshman English class to think she could write for the school paper?”
Admiration, in large part. I had been active on campus. The Eagle writers and editors were campus badasses in a nerdy sort of way. I got such joy reading Jack Crittenden’s “An unexpected career path” and seeing all the names and hyperlinking to the grown-up LinkedIn profiles of then-upperclassmen editors Jeff Erlich (I wish you’d edit this before publication, Jeff), Liz Tucci, Chris Kain, Daniel Ginsburg and Jodi Cleesatle? What a blast from the past! (Please show this to your children as validation that indeed you were badasses in college). And, the following year, Shannon Ayers, Barbara Langdon — thank you for teaching me to edit and write. Speaking of badass, two words: Stephen Kuhn. You all probably don’t even remember me.
The magic came from The Eagle’s Montessori school vibe.
We taught each other.
Like a Peanuts cartoon, were adults ever around? We were a bunch of teenagers and early 20’ers, given the freedom (who needs a car?) to say just about anything we wanted. And boy, sometimes we made a Pigpen-like mess out of things. To this day, I remember one of my headlines with “loose” when it should have been “lose.” We took risks: imagine a blue rather than black “The Eagle” banner! But (and I say this with the wisdom that comes from witnessing three of one’s children attending college) we also made a mess of relationships. Feelings were hurt. Boundaries broken.
With aged grace, I know now that comes with being 20 and up until 3 a.m. on a Sunday putting the weekly to bed while juggling classes, internships, pimples, job searches, birth control pills, the Marion Barry administration and fake IDs. But in retrospect, perhaps that (literal) pigsty of an office was just what we needed to develop the seeds of emotional intelligence.
I’ve learned over the years that when speaking or writing, it’s important to know who your audience is and to address them. It strikes me that many of those reading these posts are current students, wondering if it’s worth it to volunteer for the Eagle.
To them, I’d like to share an emphatic “hell yes!” (Jeff, don’t edit “hell”; it’s 2025). I attribute becoming editor-in-chief of my law school’s law review in large part to the editing and writing work I did on The Eagle (as well as to the learned masochism of forsaking self-care and fun to produce a publication). The Bluebook isn’t much different than “Strunk & White’s Elements of Style.” (That’s a reference for the many Eagle alums who left journalism for law school; who would have thought the gal in the black Harley leather jacket would sell out?). I have a few novels in the works to be published. I write poetry. I’ve been published a bunch of times in books and articles on my healthcare law specialty. I’m fairly certain none of that would have happened but for The Eagle.
(By the way, who’s recruiting David Gregory to be the reunion keynote speaker?)
But working for The Eagle is much more than a resume builder.
If you are open to it, the love for words will come to you. And with that comes a curiosity for life, in part from learning to feel comfortable asking questions. To be curious, not judgmental (to quote “Ted Lasso”) is a beautiful life perspective.
You will learn to write, and if you can do that, you can do almost anything (except college calculus; God help all of us who barely passed “Finite Math” at AU – do they still call it that?).
And you’ll learn to be edited, which is particularly difficult to learn from friends but also extremely helpful. You will be edited in life, such as by law firm partners 40 years older than you who have the power with their Jackson-Pollack-red-pen feedback to send you bawling in the office bathroom or, worse, in your car in the parking garage.
But there’s another audience here, right? I am guessing that I’m not the only one totally loving the memories evoked from reading write-ups from fellow staffers we haven’t seen in 30-plus years. To you, I’d like to thank you. I’m a much better writer and person than I would have been had I not spent so much time between 1990-92 with you on the third floor of Mary Graydon Center (wait; was it the second or third floor?).
Here in Jacksonville, Florida, where I got my first full-time newspaper reporter job after graduation in 1993, the Florida Times-Union campus has been demolished to build condos and a parking garage with a Whole Foods. The paper is now printed 100 miles away. The official office is in a downtown high-rise, sandwiched between law firms and accounting firms. The cigarette-stained ceilings where I wrote a page one story when Jacksonville landed the NFL Football franchise, the Jaguars, are gone. The grit is gone.
The Mary Graydon Center and I reunited a few years ago when my daughter toured AU, thinking of attending. (She chose Tulane, go figure). As they say about women my age and older now, Mary has had some work done. The grit is gone.
Grit. Perhaps that’s the most enduring and powerful thing we all learned from our time at The Eagle.
(Should the “t” be capitalized, Jeff?)
Ann Bittinger is the principal shareholder of The Bittinger Law Firm. She has specialized in transactions and contracts in the healthcare law field for 27 years and served on the Board of Directors of the American Health Law Association. She lives in Jacksonville, Florida, on the banks of the St. Johns River, with a boat but no motorcycle out back. She has raised three children, none of whom expressed any interest in journalism. She graduated from AU in 1993 and the University of Kansas School of Law in 1998. She was the campus news editor and editor-in-chief of The Eagle.
Copy editing done by Sabine Kanter-Huchting and Ariana Kavoossi.
