you know what blows? being a collegiate student athlete.
alright that sounds pretentious and entitled. but people, it's not all it's cracked up to me. sure, we have wonderful benefits (who doesn't love free nike gear, free oakley sunglass, free nike sneakers (every year), free tutoring, an extra academic advisor, free books, free healthcare & a trainer on call 24/7 for your health needs, travelling to places like california, ohio, tennessee free of charge, and an instant friend base & even the opportunity to make friends with future sport celebrities on other teams as well as your own??), and sure, i love my sport almost more than anything & can't imagine my life without it....but past that...sometimes it really suckks.
this weekend i went to visit S in harrisonburg and helllooooo meredith welcome to the real world and the real college experience. just living with him for a weekend in his apartment, with his 3 other regular-student roommates and meeting the other regular-student girls who live above him and meeting the other regular-student guys they hang out with...it was unreal. regular students literally have no reason to leave the house except to go to class. which they arent even required to do (oh yeah, as student athletes we have our classes checked every day to make sure we're attending--and if you miss one class it gets reported to your coach & punishments vary but often involve missing a practice, not being allowed to compete, or having to do extra hours of study hall or community service). I'm stressed 24/7 because i literally always have somewhere to be. On any given day my schedule is something like this:
6am: practice
930: class
11: tutoring or study hall
12: lunch
1: class
3: 20 minute nap
4: practice
630: dinner
8: study hall
10: MY ONLY FREE TIME (please note i generally fill this with episodes of teen mom, jersey shore, or moped rides about campus--oh & duh, facebook stalking)
12: sleep
not to mention the addition of field studies for my education classes...community service through athletics, athletic department mandatory dinners, career workshops, etc, and bi-weekly meetings with my academic advisor. UNREAL.
i'm truly not trying to sound ungrateful. i'm not. most days i love my lifestyle, and i absolutely loooove rowing so i would never give that up. it's just once in a while i realize how different my life is from the majority of kids my age, and how nice it would be to live as a regular student, maybe just for a week or two, with no obligations, places to be, wake up times, class skipping repurcussions, etc. freedom, just for a little bit, might be nice. i also stress that my different take on the college experience is a mistake...shouldn't i be fucking around like every other college kid? squandering my parents money to half-ass academics & get schmammered 8 days a week?
in my british lit class we're presently reading jane austen's "sense & sensibility" (ps i love that witty motherfucker--she still has people [me] laughing out loud at her snarkey-ness decades later). the passage i had to read last night included the passage in which one of the characters, edward, comments on what profession he'd like to pursue (clergy), what his mother would rather have him pursue (law, military), and what he's doing instead (endlessly studying at oxford), in which he declares that "idleness was pronounced on the whole to be the most advantageous and hounourable" and that he was "therefore entered at oxford and have been properly idle ever since."
it amazes me that even generations ago, people still considered collegiate education in the same light. idleness is a staple if not the definition of college it seems, and while i think its a much needed break from the stifled nature of childhood and adolescence, i mostly just think that society's getting it wrong. undergraduate education is taken for granted nowadays and it's truly depressing. 4 years of school is a steep price for anyone to pay for their child's education, regardless of economic status, and i feel like more often than not, kids squander it. the way i see it....i only have 5 1/2 more semesters to learn whatever i want and as much as i want free of charge (as in, thank you mom & dad for giving this truly amazing opportunity...i'm immensely grateful..really) .... i'd have to be stupid to not take full advantage of this. perhaps as an education major i place a higher value on education than most people do...but i'm okay with that. and that's why ultimately....i'm really glad i'm a collegiate student athlete. besides all the benefits (they rock) and my adoration for rowing, i love the student athlete lifestyle because it keeps me focused. i'm kept busy so fucking around isn't an option...this lifestyle requires dedication and effort in everything i do, and i love that my sport makes me inadvertently take proper advantage of a monstrously wonderful opportunity.
