College has a variety of experiences that students go through, things you will both remember and forget.

We print journalism students were told that election night would be one of the best nights of our college years. We were told it would be this great experience we’d never forget. Personally, I was late in catching the election buzz, but when I did it was a rush.

You could feel it in the air on Monday as the day came to vote. The election meant a few things for Lethbridge. It meant change, a new mayor for the city, and for us, it meant covering our first election.

We trotted off to where our assigned mayoral candidates were going to be to watch as the results came in, armed with Ipod touches ready to Tweet live from location, and with our cameras to photographically document the night. I was with Dennis Carrier at the Eagles’ Hall on the north side.

The one thing we can all agree on was the intensity in the rooms as Chris Spearman for a brief few minutes pulled ahead of Rajko Dodic, everyone’s eyes glued intently to the TV screens and waiting with bated breath to see what would come of the sudden turn of events.

Lethbridge stood still for those moments, much like the people did. The Eagles’ Hall erupted into cheers for Spearman when he first pulled ahead, though the cheers faded into anticipation and then slight disappointment when Dodic resumed his hold on the mayoral race.

Although it was soon clear that Carrier wasn’t going to win the election, what sticks with me is his overall attitude about it. While expressing disappointment at Dodic’s win, calling it the “same old, same old” for Lethbridge, Carrier also said that he was “already a winner” because of his friends and supporters.

If this were a Stanley Cup final game, you couldn’t bottle that sort of sportsmanship and just give it away. That comes from the heart.

All six of us came back to the college at around 10 p.m. with a different version of election night to tell of. We got our stories written and photos submitted, munched on pizza and cookies, reliving in our minds this amazing change we had just seen Lethbridge undergo.

            I find that times like that are when I sort of rediscover why I’m really doing this. It’s refreshing to put the fun factor back into what you’ve chosen to do with the rest of your life.

It’s not often a student can say they loved every minute of staying at the college until 11:30 at night when there’s an 8 a.m. class waiting dauntingly for you the next morning. But it was one of those experiences from college that I’ll never forget.