As part of Roll Call’s 70th anniversary, we’ve asked several notable alumni to reflect on their time working for the paper. We’ll run these columns throughout the summer.

“You’ve got the job. … But just so you know, you spelled ‘February’ wrong here on your résumé.”

My 22-year-old heart froze.

Roll Call Editor-in-Chief Tim Curran looked up, held my gaze, then broke into his signature grin. “I bet you won’t do that again.”

I wasn’t even on the payroll yet, but it was my first big lesson as a 20-something working at Roll Call.

There were many more lessons over the course of seven years at “The Newspaper of Capitol Hill.”

That first job that Tim hired me for included doing whatever Executive Editor Morton Kondracke needed done — from sorting his mail to research for his columns.

You could learn a lifetime of journalism lessons from the legendary Mort. But he also showed me that it’s OK to have a passion outside of journalism.

If you haven’t read Mort’s book, “Saving Milly: Love, Politics, and Parkinson’s Disease,” you should.

Stuart Rothenberg and Nathan L. Gonzales regularly knew congressional districts better than the candidates who were running to represent them. Stu and Nathan interviewed scores (hundreds?) of candidates each cycle for their stories in Roll Call and The Rothenberg Political Report. They knew how to move very quickly past talking points and BS. They didn’t suffer fools. Sitting in on a Stu and Nathan interview was always an educational, and fun, day at work.

That was the thing about being a 20-something at Roll Call — there were so many fun days.

A big reason why was because our editors — Charlie Mitchell, Amy Carlile and Lauren Whittington among them — trusted us to simply go find the story.

I went on a canoe trip with a Republican member of Congress. I went bowling with a Democrat (I should have known I was going to lose when she showed up with her own ball.)

One freshman House member facing a tough reelection decided to make a splash with 24 campaign stops over the course of 24 hours. Roll Call photographer Doug Graham and I tailed him every step of the way — including a 4 a.m. stop at a muddy rural Virginia dairy farm. The only people up at that ungodly hour were the farmer, the congressman and, unexpectedly, a camera crew from Japanese Public Television. It was so odd — and so very fun.

At Roll Call I learned that members from opposite parties can, and do, find ways to work well together.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., and former Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., were an effective and efficient team leading the Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee. And they even seemed to actually like each other.

I also learned that it’s best to just pick up the phone and call.

Chris Cillizza could work the phones better than any reporter I’ve ever met. I swear he made 50 phone calls a day as Roll Call’s campaigns reporter. It paid off in the news he was able to break. And it did not go unnoticed as I cut my teeth as a cub reporter on stories about low-level staff changes in congressional offices.

(And as a side note, it was while writing all those congressional staffing stories that I was handed the book “What Do You Call A Person From …?: A Dictionary of Resident Names.” It’s a book that has been unexpectedly useful in my current job.)

I learned that photojournalists make the best wedding photographers. I expect my wife and I will be laughing over and loving Tom Williams’ photos of our nuptials for the rest of our lives.

But the most important lesson, the one thing I’d make sure to tell any 20-something reporter coming up today, is to simply show up.

Be in the newsroom. You never know when an opportunity will present itself.

My biggest story, involving a certain Idaho senator in a certain Minneapolis airport men’s restroom, fell into my lap.

I was the “campus” reporter — what you might call Roll Call’s “cops and courts” beat. An anonymous tip about an unusual police report came in to my friend and editor Josh Kurtz.

I was in the office on that slow, hot, late-August congressional recess Monday. I was there, and Josh trusted me to go find the story.

The next thing we knew we had broken the national news about then-Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, being arrested in June by a plainclothes police officer for lewd conduct, and pleading guilty in early August to misdemeanor disorderly conduct and paying a fine.

I realize I was lucky to have spent my formative reporting years at Roll Call. I also wonder if today’s 20-somethings — the recent college grads working on their first résumés — will have the opportunities, and the fun, that I had in my first reporting job.

I hope they do. I hope their editors trust them to go find the story.

I also hope that today’s editors will cut today’s 20-somethings a break, especially if they happen to misspell “February.”

John McArdle worked at Roll Call from 2003 to 2010 and is currently a C-SPAN host and producer.