And I’m okay with that.

At least I am now.

When I got to the newsroom at 1pm today for my general assignment shift, I took an inauspicious seat at the graphics desk. I wanted to work on my long-term(ish) piece about cradle to career networks in peace.

Five minutes later, Liz’s voice boomed across the newsroom.

“Liz Scheltens, where are you?”

I peeked around the giant computer monitor.

“Come over here with the other reporters! Stop hiding!”

I re-packed my enormous backpack and migrated closer to my colleagues. I re-opened my file of notes.

“Liz Scheltens, I’ve got a tip I’m sending you. Check it out.”

I opened the email. “Seriously?” I thought. “The SEC?”

Mizzou’s inaugural season as a member of the Southeastern Conference has all the sports fans in a tizzy. Not me, I had serious public service journalism to commit. But Liz is the boss of me, so I went to go check it out.

I could feel every turn of my bicycle wheels taking me further away from the story I wanted to be working on.

But the more calls that I made, the more people I talked to, the more I dug in, the more the opportunity for a story presented itself. Now I’m working on something completely different than I had in mind when I came in today, and I’m glad! Once I got over the initial discomfort of working on something new, I started to feel excited.

That’s why Liz Brixey is the boss of me, and a darn good one at that.