It's not every day that a writer gets a front-page byline in the Chicago Tribune. So my career was bound to be all downhill after this story about the Wisconsin Legislature raising the drinking age.

I tried not to get a big head about it. A journalism professor from the University of Wisconsin later said my early work resembled notes phoned in and slapped together by a rewrite editor. Ouch. Thankfully, the national editor at the Tribune had a higher opinion of my work.