I’ve been around a long time. I started college when today’s freshmen were 11 years old. I remember when Chuck Amato was hired. I still own a “The test was positive: Chuck Amato is your daddy” T-shirt.

And I was working the night the news broke that Tom O’Brien was going to be our new coach.

I was lucky to enough to be a student for all four years of two of the Wolfpack’s brightest stars: Philip Rivers and Julius Hodge.

I watched Hodge in the McDonald’s All-American game in my dorm room before he came here.

When I graduated from State in 2004, I didn’t intend on coming back for a graduate degree, but I knew it might be a possibility.

I went to Clinton, S.C., and wrote for a great newspaper for a year. In the fall of 2005, I decided I wanted to come back for a master’s degree.

After a semester, I decided I wanted to write again, and the folks at Technician graciously accepted me back. I’ve seen a lot of great things here. I was fortunate enough to travel to Miami this semester to cover the football game against the Hurricanes. I was standing on the field under the goal posts, looking up as Steven Hauschka’s game-winning kick split the uprights.

I saw diminutive Washington guard Nate Robinson rebound and dunk in one motion, and I saw Philip Rivers go crazy against Texas Tech in 2003.

The thing that makes it different than just being a fan — the thing that makes it special — is that I was able to talk to these players after the game. I got to ask them face-to-face what it felt like to do the incredible things they did.

As I was sitting in the press box at the Orange Bowl, I couldn’t believe my luck. And later, while I was watching the final six minutes and overtime of the Miami game from the field, I couldn’t believe I was going to be paid (albeit it a little) to write about a football game.

But it’s over now. A trek that started in January 2003 with a shy kid who wanted to try to write about sports a little ends in December 2007 as a deputy sports editor with hundreds of interviews, articles and friends behind me.

So, with graduation approaching and a master’s degree waiting for me, I’m at the end of the road.

I want to say thanks to Tyler Dukes, Josh Harrell and Tanner Kroeger for allowing me to come back to work with a great group of people. Thanks to Josh, Laura White, Clark Leonard, Nick Jeffreys and everyone on the third floor of Witherspoon for making this a great eight months as an editor. I will miss all of you intensely.

Thanks to my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles for being loyal readers.

And a big thanks to Anne, who put up with me being gone for a lot of hours during the week, so I could do something I love for the little time I was fortunate enough to be allowed to do it.