I was lucky enough to have both an academic and athletic scholarship paying for my undergraduate education. Sports has helped me develop in so many great ways and I absolutely intend on having my children enroll in sports. It helped teach me teamwork, the importance of exercise, navigating different social relationships, and helped me develop into the confident person I am today. Occasionally, I’ll glance at the TV in a bar if there are sports on, but I don’t really pay attention. Watching other people play just isn’t interesting to me. Fine, if that’s your thing, but it’s just not for me. I do love playing though. I’m in two co-ed relaxed leagues and I truly do love and appreciate sports.
So now that I’ve said what I like, here’s what I dislike: big-name sports. My university is an R1 school with big NCAA Division I teams. This means that during football season things get wild with plenty of drunkards, fights, . Now I’m not going to get into how much of the state money gets pumped into sports (https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/2013/05/07/ncaa-finances-subsidies/2142443/) (http://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances); this is more about how I have to plan some of my weeknights and weekends around what sports events are happening. I like that people can get together and cheer on their home team, but I don’t like the vomit, trash, and general hooliganery that accompanies these events. I can deal with the fact that every once in a while the parking costs will go up for events, and that there will be crowds. It’s no different than a concert or conference. But why do these events bring out the worst in a lot of people? I know that only a small percentage of the fans there are the shitty people, but they stand out, and no one does anything about it. Just a rant.
Aside from all of that, this semester is already kicking my ass. The new class I have, plus some projects at home, and trying to set up a new project have made my free time less sparse. My cup is running near-empty at the end of every day. This is where delegation will have to come in. At home and for class I can’t delegate, so I’m giving a lab tech and my post-doc each an extra project and I’m only going to want the really high-level stuff for now. I’m just hoping that when things clear up in a bit that I will be able to have a detailed meeting with each of them and the project won’t have progressed too far off track. I trust my tech, but I’m not sure about my post-doc whether they’ll come through. This will be really tough for me because it’s tough for me to break free and trust other people with my tasks.
academic infiltration 