thegradstudent

An observation/complaint: there are hardly any athletes in my program. I know of ONE other person who really loves sports and plays them whenever possible, and a handful who would play a sport if pressed. The rest look at me like I’m crazy when I return from a bike ride or when I try to organize pickup basketball. A larger number stay in shape at the gym or jogging around campus of course, but that isn’t quite the same, and there’s still an alarming number of completely sedentary people in the grad program. It’s been quite the adjustment for me; in high school I played two school sports, in undergrad I played on a club sports team and participated in three intramural sports, and all along the way my family and the vast majority of my friends were into sports in one way or another. Almost no one here cares about playing sports though. They don’t even want to watch them – I’ve gone to a few school football, basketball, and volleyball games but I have to sit by myself or with my visiting family because my friends would have to be physically dragged along. I realize that stereotypically it makes sense: we’re the nerds who preferred reading and thinking to doing growing up, the ones who would rather curl up with a book than hit the kickball diamond at recess. And that’s fine. But I always loved and balanced both school and sports, and I still do so – last spring I managed to succeed in grad school while playing on a state championship club team (which was of course made up of undergrads). Why are there so few of us? Why are we such a rare breed?