The cluster of straw poll stories and “how to enjoy college in five easy steps” columns that packed the Daily last week triggered memories of my first days at Iowa State.

A few hours after hammering a loft into my Helser dorm room, I bravely walked across campus to 108 Hamilton Hall and filled out a reporter application.

Always looking to one-up the competition, I brought a few clippings from my high school paper and stapled them to my form.

Later that day, the Currents (the former name of the Arts & Entertainment page, which also has been called Lifestyles since I’ve been here) Editor called my dorm room and offered me a job.

Money, baby.

I was the bomb. (I would soon learn that the Daily hires anybody who walks through the door, even if you’re a white guy named Flash who writes entirely in ebonics.)

So I trekked back and got my first assignment: A couple of students were opening a new bar in Campustown called The Dean’s List, and I was to interview them and write up a short feature.

Once again, I was all about impressing my new editor and I wanted to excel on my first piece.

So I did what any idiot freshman in my shoes would have done and I stood outside the bar at 2 a.m. on a Friday night and interviewed people as they stumbled out the door.

My quotes ranged from “Dude, it rocks” to the more descriptive “Dude, it kicks ass.”

But it was my experience outside The Dean’s List that would lead to Assignment No. 2.

After a few interviews, a flock of beautiful blondes spotted me jotting down some notes and approached me with the now-common “Do you write for the Daily?” line.

Money, baby.

“Yep. Do you ladies want to tell me about The Dean’s List?”

“Not really. Hey, are you coming to our house tomorrow?”

Wow, college girls are really forward. “Sure,” I said. “What’s the occasion?”

Expecting to hear a line out of “Silk Stalkings,” I was a bit disappointed when they explained that Bob and Elizabeth Dole were going to speak in their front lawn, because of course, Elizabeth is a former Tri Delt.

I went back to the Daily office the next morning and nervously said to one of the news editors, “I’m sure you know this, but the Doles are speaking at some sorority today.”

“Um, yeah, of course,” the editor stuttered. “How would you like to cover it?”

“I would love to,” I answered, knowing damn well I knew nothing about politics except that Elizabeth Dole was a Tri Delt, which I only knew from the night before.

But I put on my “scoop” hat and headed for the Tri Delta house (where I would ironically spend a good portion of my college years).

Elizabeth spoke and then Bob. The straw polls were his topic of choice, but since I had no idea what they were, I decided to go in for further reporting.

With notebook in hand, I walked right up to him and asked him a variety of generic questions:

“Why should college students vote for Bob Dole?”

“Why are you running for president?”

“Do you believe in the first amendment?”

Luckily, he was nice and actually gave me pretty decent answers.

I raced back to the Daily feeling the high of having just met a celebrity (this was well before the Bea Arthur days) and wrote up what was probably a really lame story.

But I’ll never know just how lame because the editors decided to make my piece part of the Associated Press article they were running on the straw polls.

They told me this on Sunday, so when I saw the top of the front page of Monday’s Daily, I was surprised to see my byline next to an elaborate article about the straw polls.

I still had no idea what the straw polls even where, but because of the “Associated Press contributed to this story” tag they put on the end of the piece, I looked like the next Woodward or Bernstein.

I walked pretty tall that day, even when I found out my editor had not even read my high school clips yet.

But he did. And I’ll never forget what he said.

“I looked at your high school stuff today. That thing you wrote about Vanilla Ice was pretty funny. Would you ever consider writing something like that for the Daily?”

Money, baby.

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Corey Moss is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Urbandale.