I worked at my high school newspaper at Andover which came out weekly unusual for a high school paper. Then my first day at Penn I went right to the 'Daily Pennsylvanian' and pretty much spent most of my college career working both as the sports editor and then editor of the editorial page.
I stayed away from mathematics not so much because I knew it would be hard work as because of the amount of time I knew it would take hours spent in a field where I was not a natural.