Greatest. Case. Of. The. Mondays. EVER.

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I am delighted to announce that I am officially employed!!!

I'll be covering high school sports for the Quad-City Times in Davenport, Iowa. The QC Times has a 51,000 circulation on weekdays and 70,000 on Sunday; Davenport (100,000 population) is the largest of four towns in the Quad Cities (350,000), right on the Mississippi River separating Iowa from Illinois. It's just under three hours from Mad-town and even closer to Chicago. As you can imagine, in this economic climate and especially considering a fledgling newspaper industry, I'm blessed to have been given this opportunity and cannot WAIT to get down there to begin work at the start of June. I'll be keeping you all posted on how the job's going, with some Madison updates too, of course.

One thing I'll also say about it, without trying to stand up too tall on a soap box. My advice to all my friends that are trying to get journalism jobs right now (and everyone who's reading this trying to do the same): don't give up. If you've worked hard enough, you care enough about the profession and you keep pursuing what you want, there's always going to be room for able sportswriters. Don't listen to ANYBODY who tells you there's "no jobs" or whatever in sports journalism; don't acknowledge that pessimism even a little bit. I know I didn't, and I'm moving on to very, very exciting things because I didn't.

Oh, and I'm not closing the book on Madison just yet. I'll have my final words on my last four years in Wisconsin within the next day or two; hopefully, my Oklahoman comrade in crime can do the same for his Sooners as well.

-AJ