We all know and love the most anticipated concert of the year (or should I say two years now). The Eras Tour, quite frankly, turned the world upside down and gave Taylor Swift a new level of fame I didn’t even think was possible.

As a die-hard Swiftie who has attended Swift’s shows since 2013, I obviously fought hard for tickets in the Ticketmaster battle of November 2022.

If you are unaware to what I am referring, here’s a little background:

Fans had the ability to sign up as a “Verified Fan” for Taylor Swift on Ticketmaster, which advertised extra incentives like private ticket sales and presale codes to get early access to tickets. What went wrong is Ticketmaster sent out an abundance of presale codes by mistake, resulting in an overload of people on the site at one time, all trying to buy from the same small selection of tickets.

Both my brother and I signed up and were sent presale codes for the Pittsburgh shows. We entered the queue the morning of the sale and immediately were behind thousands of people in line. He got in first, but immediately was kicked out and sent to the back of the line. With tears streaming down my face and my heart rate pumping at 125 bpm, I was panicking and worried I wasn’t going to see Swift for the first time in 10 years.

Because of the influx of people, the site kept crashing, and nothing was working properly. Ticketmaster paused the queue, which meant no one was able to move in line anymore and tickets weren’t actively being sold.

This didn’t stop me, however. As a true, dedicated Swiftie, I canceled my plans for the rest of the day and stayed put with hopes the queue would eventually start moving again. About three hours later, I could see the slightest movement in my spot in line out of the corner of my eye. True enough, the queue opened back up, and I was on my way to my turn at tickets. Around 2:30 p.m. I landed three tickets to The Eras Tour for Pittsburgh, Night One for face value.

I was on cloud nine! I could not believe I was lucky enough to survive getting tickets to see Swift in concert yet again.

About seven months later, it was finally time for my mom, best friend and I to road trip across the state to Pittsburgh for the concert.

Shimmering, sparkling and dancing like no one was watching, we had the time of our lives with Swift. It was so worth the blood, sweat and tears I put into getting the tickets.

’Til next time, Taylor! You can always count on me being there.

— Emily Gladu, administrative coordinator