Of all the odd jobs Sima Dahl (’90) held to put herself through college — “spraying disinfectant into sweaty skates at the Ice Arena, cleaning puddles of syrup from drunk coeds when I worked overnights at IHOP” — none could match the memories of her time reviewing soap operas for The Daily Illini.
She was given the ‘One Life to Live’ beat; a friend had ‘General Hospital.’
“We didn’t take the soap opera sagas seriously enough for some readers,” who let them hear about it in letters to the editor. “Apparently, describing a scene in which a woman drops her infant child as a ‘baby doing a back flip off the couch’ was a bit over the top,” says Dahl, who went on to become an in-demand international speaker.
