Kids watch the darndest things
The other day, I found myself having a conversation with my roommates about television shows from our childhood.
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The other day, I found myself having a conversation with my roommates about television shows from our childhood.
Like many of us, I was so ready to leave my hometown when I graduated high school. I couldn’t wait to go somewhere where nobody knew me and take the opportunity to start over completely. I would be an entirely new person in Charlottesville, I told myself. I would wear new clothes, make new friends, find the new me — whatever it was that people did in college.
For me, winter break has always been about goal-setting. Without the pressure of class and with nothing to worry about but basketball, winter break is the ideal time to better myself.
If there is one thing the holidays have taught me, it is that commercial travel is perhaps one of the most unifying and simultaneously divisive forces of our era, especially during the holiday season. It is a far different thing than packing up your car and driving the four, five or even six hours home to see your family. In the car you are usually alone; you are on your own time. You can play the CDs you want and stop at the rest stops and greasy fast food chains you would normally never consider if you were in the company of others. You can be yourself.
Perfect students. We all know them — I mean, it’s U.Va. There’s the student with a 3.7 GPA who is active in six different clubs and president of two of them and still manages to work out two hours a day and eat healthy. And then there is the rest of us, only in two clubs, squeaking by with a 3.2 and stuffing our face with French fries every time the workload gets to be too much. Naturally, we feel like crap about ourselves in comparison.
As a fourth year, I’ve realized that even though we have what seems like 1700 libraries at the University, there are only so many places students can do work before the pattern starts to repeat itself.
I’m sure we’ve all been there. Something random breaks, a friend asks you what you should be for Halloween, you’ve bought something that looked really great on the mannequin, and now you have absolutely nothing to wear it for. Where do we turn for solutions to these problems? Back in the day, all 10 to 15 years ago, we simply asked a friend: Hey, what does this look cute with? Hi there, I really don’t want to buy a costume this year, any good ideas? Now, everyone gets their creative ideas from the Internet.
In this day and age we value being busy. This is nothing new. We admire the people who barely have time to breathe in between their extracurricular meetings, their 18-credit class schedule, their dedicated workout regimen and their full-to-the-brim social life. Those students get our respect and probably induce a lot of introspection. I’ll admit it, I’ve found myself wondering if I should be doing more. Do I join another club, take up an impressive hobby? I’ve packed my schedule fuller than my suitcase when going home for the summer, and I’ve been to so many extracurricular meetings in one day that I left my house at 10 a.m. and didn’t get back until 10 p.m.
For some people, fourth year is their chance to show off. That’s cool, guys. I get it. You don’t have anything else to worry about, you’re coasting, you have time to pick out what you want to wear. But for me, it has been quite the opposite. My last few years, I have tried to dress up for the majority of my classes. I’m not sure if it was fighting the athlete stereotype that motivated me or the recollection of wearing sweatpants in middle school that has become seared into my memory. In those dark years I found appropriately long jeans, but correctly fitting athletic wear escaped me. Okay, I am lying; finding pretty much any appropriately fitting clothing was a big problem for a 6-foot-3-inch eighth grader. Either way, I felt a little safer when in jeans and baby tees, because although my ankles may have shown, I was stylish up top. Come on, who wasn’t insecure in middle school?
This year at the University has had a bit of a different feel for me. I am entering my fourth year, forgive me for being sentimental, but I have a lot of feelings about it. Mostly, the “this is the beginning of the rest of my life, only with a year to prepare” elation.
I have a confession to make.
I
Winter 2012 has been one of the first winters I haven't been miserable, largely because it is the first winter which has not actually been like a typical one. As a Marylander turned Virginian, I have never lived in a state, which does not experience all four seasons. As a person who abhors the cold, I have never experienced a winter in which the brisk air and potential for snow did not make me wish human beings hibernated.
I have my first ever college internship lined up this semester. I don't know how I managed to pull it off with basketball and my class schedule. I have to admit, it took some serious manipulating, so much, in fact, that I didn't let myself believe it would happen until I actually met my boss. Thankfully, the introductions went well, the tour of the facilities went smoothly and the people I would soon work with seemed nice. As I went from room to room, however, I noticed one thing in particular. People were wearing slacks, heels, blazers, pantsuits - things I did not own.
Here it is, another semester at our darling University. Time to reunite with friends we haven't seen in weeks, exchange stories of who had the best - or most boring - break, and discuss the ache in each of our hearts from returning to U.Va. It should be a pleasant period, filled with lunches and coffee dates to see everyone we've had to go painful hours, days, even weeks without. And for those first few early days before classes start it is. And then, Jan. 18 hits.
This week my third Thanksgiving Break at the University came to a close. Although I was not treated to my mother's cooking or embarrassing family stories, I did fulfill at least one standard school holiday expectation: I got a miraculous nine hours of sleep a night - unheard of since I came to college. It did take changing time zones to accomplish this, however, so I don't know how many accolades are due here.
It is officially fall, slowly creeping its way into winter. Several of my friends have told me how excited they are for the season. It's time for them to pull out their sweaters and pea coats, and snuggle under down comforters with hot chocolate. For me, winter makes me wish humans required hibernation; I would love nothing more than to stuff my face for those few miserable weeks of fall and then disappear until summer, hopefully far slimmer and with slightly less frizzy hair, but I realize that may be asking for too much.
Every year since I moved out of dorms and got my own kitchen - so about two years total - I have started the school year off by planning to win at life, as I am sure most of us do. But one of my particular goals as a vegetarian and also an athlete is to cook every meal at home. As a vegetarian athlete, I feel I spend most of my hours counting grams of protein like Jennifer Hudson counted Weight Watchers points. It will be healthy, I tell myself. It will be cheap, I say. I can do this.
This past Sunday was the women's basketball team's first day of practice. Looking back at the beginning of the year, I can't believe it is already here. It seems like just yesterday we were fondly lacing up our new shoes and telling nostalgic stories of last year's quaint locker room shenanigans. How time flies when you are having fun. I had several feelings as practice began. I was nervous - this was our first practice with our new coaching staff and I wanted to impress. I was excited - who knows what wondrous new changes the practice would bring? And I will admit, I was a little bit anxious. Because the start of practice, the official harbinger of the upcoming season, meant the end of life as I now know it.
Something has been tickling the back of my brain lately. Rest assured, it is no serious medical condition, but rather a curious sensation which has me staring blankly at the ceiling at night contemplating the coming day and making the same color coded, timeline-format to-do list in every class. Word on the street is this feeling is called "stress." Professionals say it is a serious condition and that as young adults, we should not let it control our lives. They also claim that too much stress is most definitely a bad thing.