I had arrived at the show as a true believer. A Saturday Night Live nerd since age 10 — I'd learned about the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players the same week as the '86–'87 cast, and an astonishing number of my childhood drawings were of SNL logos — I'd also been a fan of Tina's since 1998, when I saw her do monologues at ASSSSCAT, the Upright Citizens Brigade's heralded long-form improv show. So when I was given a DVD of the 30 Rock pilot in the summer of 2006, I watched it immediately and was totally on board. "I want to work on that show," I said — aloud, to no one — as the disc ended.

At the time, working on the show didn't seem like it was in the cards. Working in television didn't seem like it was in the cards. I was just returning to the TV world at age 30 as a production assistant after a four-year period in which I pretended I was a singer-songwriter. Starting over as a PA often made me feel like Billy Madison returning to elementary school, and I wasn't sure I had it in me to tough it out. But within a year I found myself in the script department at Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and a year after that, I was hired by Tina and Robert. Just being able to tell them how much I loved the show, I recall, meant a lot to me. I was grateful that I'd persevered.

In a lot of ways, I experienced my first season at the show as a 30 Rock fan: taking everything in, being as delighted by pitches, outlines, scripts, and table reads as I had been by watching the show at home during the first two seasons. I hung on every word in the writers' room — which, when you consider that one of my duties was to take notes, was actually quite helpful. But it got to the point that I'd take notes on the comedy bits that would organically break out, unrelated to the show. I stopped doing this after Tina looked through a list of potential story ideas and discovered one I'd typed about a medical condition in which a patient has a small penis growing in his or her mouth that gets aroused by hunger. "Our writers' assistants may be a little too thorough," she laughed, and I was mortified — but as with everything that happened that year, still pretty thrilled.

While that level of enthusiasm returned at many points over the next few years, it became impossible to sustain. My love for the show could get lost in the task at hand — the long hours, the relentless schedule, the constant emails, the missed social gatherings, the restaurant selection. (We wrote and shot primarily at Silvercup Studios in Queens, and as such, we mostly ordered from one of four terrible places every day.) I rarely lost my sense of dedication — in fact, I may have been too dedicated — but I occasionally lost sight of why I was so loyal. At certain points, I may have even wished aloud for the last day to come. And when an end date was set, I may have even breathed a sigh of relief.

As that date approached, however — you may know where this is going, but it was a surprise to me, possibly because I'm an emotional moron — every ounce of my wide-eyed enthusiasm for 30 Rock came rushing back, and then some. I made it a point to take in as much as possible over the following few weeks, since it didn't — and doesn't — seem likely that I'd be part of such a thing again.