KVVU anchor Dave Hall recalls walking in to the Las Vegas-area Fox affiliate for the first time in 2001 and thinking, “I really need to fire my agent.”

“The newsroom was cramped, the set was hideous and the equipment was dated,” Hall writes on the KVVU website. “The first few weeks were rough. I hated the job, hated the city and hated my daily commute.”

Hall went from promotions writer (with no promotion-writing experience) to sports anchor (which he calls “unfulfilling”) to morning anchor, a position he was offered in 2006. “My boss called me into his office, which was an instant red flag for me,” he wrote. “Are they canning me? Shipping me out to some tiny market in Montana? He had something far worse in mind: our morning newscast.”

Five years later, Hall writes that dropping his “ball and stick” mentality and transitioning into hard news was difficult, but worthwhile. “I can look back and definitively say it was the smartest decision I ever made,” he notes. “They’ve been the best 10 years of my life.”