A (relatively) brief overview of the past few weeks...

I write today many weeks overdue, well past the regular blogging time I would like to keep up. It’s been roughly 7 weeks since I last wrote, and life has been like one giant sprint through an obstacle course. A quick overview, then some thoughts on school and football. Perhaps I will split this into two separate posts.

August 1-7: Tuesday night was a MUSS board activity and a bunch of us went to the Bee’s game. I’m notoriously known for not being a huge baseball fan, although I did re-discover my appreciation for the game over the summer. Still not my favorite sport to watch by any stretch of the imagination; I enjoy watching the game live much more than on TV. Went home to Idaho Falls on Wednesday to see hang out with my family and work the Idaho Falls Country Club Member-Guest from 7 AM-3 PM Thursday, Friday and Saturday. On Sunday I drove to Tremonton to pick up a one Ms. Lindsay James before we stopped in Ogden to see our dear friend Tiffany Law to help her stay awake for her EEG Monday morning, with many other close friends of course.
August 8-14: Stayed up most of Sunday night well into Monday morning with Tiffany and friends. Definitely a fun time seeing everyone together again. Incidentally, this would double as a small going away party for Tiff as she left for DC for an internship for the semester. Also, under the radar somehow as always, I’m sure on somewhat purpose because he never tries to attract too much attention to himself, this also served as Batman Zach’s goodbye to the group, leaving for the sunnier desert skies of Tucson, AZ. I drove Lindsay back to Tremonton Monday morning and actually ended up spending the day with her. We went to see her brother Travis’ family, getting a hug from her nephew Nate, chatted it up with her niece Abbie about the violin, and pushed little Tom in the swing. Had dinner with Lindsay and her parents, and then headed back to Salt Lake City around 7 o’clock. On Thursday, the MUSS board attended our annual lunch with the football coaching staff up at the Dee Glen Smith Center. It’s one of my favorite events of the year because we get to hang out with the great men leading Utah Football. It never fails: every year new board members are in awe of just how personable our coaching staff is and down to earth with us, mere college students. It’s never a wonder to me why our program has been so successful in recent years. You gotta know the Xs and Os to win games, but it takes more than that to repeatedly win championships and bowls like they do.
August 15-21: At this point, I already realized that this semester was already going to be unlike any other, I just didn’t know how. This week would be the beginning of a whole new world. First new thing: meetings. I already attend a lot of meetings already, but somehow this year I’ve been in at least one or two meetings a week, maybe a couple more impromptu ones depending on how often I visit the Alumni House haha, in addition to the occasional interview for something MUSS related. But it started off with a meeting on Monday with Mark Matheson, probably one of the coolest professors on campus, just to catch up. On Tuesday and Wednesday I went to graduate school orientation. Tuesday was dedicated to CPR/First Aid re-certification. What does that mean? Basically it amounted to a 7 hour crash course of the two subjects, with lunch in between. That evening we had a small informal dinner with the faculty, and I was humbled that the professors in my emphasis all remembered me and expected great things from me. Wednesday evening was a long overdue MUSS Board meeting, getting every back up to speed and preparing for a crazy first few weeks.  On Thursday morning, MUSS Board VP Ellen Stemle and I were a part of Utah Athletics Social Media Day, which was a lot of fun! We were only on for about 15 minutes out of an entire day of interviewing and answering questions from all the Utah sports programs. At 11 AM I went up to the Burbidge Center for a quick tutor orientation for the semester. It’s just a little refresher seminar on the dos and don’ts of working with NCAA athletes. Some pretty tedious stuff, but when in doubt, the answer is usually don’t do more with them than just help with their class. Friday morning me and a few board members helped out with an event called Race Around the U (based on the show The Amazing Race), something spearheaded by friend Jillian West. We ended up staying there longer than we wanted, but I’d consider it a pretty good success. The team of Sara, Steve, Trevor and Steven won by about 15 minutes and their reward was a $25 gift card at the bookstore. #Win! After helping out with that and going to lunch, I drove to Park City to visit Lindsay and her parents. I hung out with them for the afternoon and had dinner with them, played a rousing game of Phase 10 (Lindsay and her mom are more competitive than you might think!), then I drove home, arriving just before midnight.
August 22-28: First week of school! I only have classes on Tuesday and Thursday, but it seems like the other days are filled with meetings or some form of preparation. I woke up to a phone call from UPC asking if we were going to be at Crimson Nights that Friday. I said sure, then began to scramble for the rest to prepare the board on such short notice with a great amount of help from TJ McMullin. Tuesday morning I attended my first grad class, which was joint with an undergrad class that I took a year ago. After class, Dr. Shultz informed me that I did not have to take the class and I could waive out of it. This also began another scrambling, this time searching for a class to fill the now empty void in my schedule. Tuesday night was an always fun Student Alumni Board meeting. After a hectic week, Friday finally arrives and after a MUSS ticket distribution meeting and an awesome Utah Volleyball match, we are finally ready for Crimson Nights. After a frustrating series of events aimed at UPC, we are set up. Tired and stressed, I was ready for the weekend. Fanfest was that morning. It’s always great to see so many Utah fans and be around fellow Utes. I can’t imagine the atmosphere in about 5-10 years after we’ve further established ourselves in the Conference of Champions. After going to another great Utah Volleyball match at noon, I headed to Idaho Falls with Trevor and Lisa because they wanted to go to Trevor’s mission companion’s homecoming. Quite an adventure driving home on Sunday as we detoured to Logan amid closed highways and exits on the way back so I could pick up something for my brother-in-law.
August 29-September 4: Ticket distribution! I was at the Alumni House from about 7:45 AM to about 4 PM on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Lots of work, but always worth it. After scrambling for the past week trying to find another class to fill the one I waived out of, I landed in a research group with a few people in my program, and it’s been pretty fun ever since! I’m definitely the baby of the group in terms of both age and experience in the field. Just trying to be a sponge right now. Thursday evening was the first football game of the year! Opening up against Montana State isn’t anything to get too excited about, but the first game of the season is. Lots of rust and kinks to work out after that initial 37-10 win, but a win is a win. Instead of heading home for the weekend like I planned for a wedding reception, I stayed in Salt Lake to try to recover from the previous week or two.
September 5-11: You’d think that by this point in time, I would be used to the perceived craziness by now, but no, not really. Being busy has become the norm. This week we prepared for MUSS Bus X to Southern California! A couple impromptu meetings in the Alumni House with John, Brynn and Ellen, a MUSS board meeting on Wednesday evening, classes, then MUSS Bus X on Thursday night! I missed a few volleyball matches while we were on the bus :( However, despite the loss and a little bit of tailgate hunting frustration, and a momentarily broken bus, it was a great weekend! It was a great example of creating your own experience. It was a lot of fun hanging out with Steve, Zac and Mike, as well as Britney, Lisa, Kenny, Justin, and co. Another special part of this trip is I got to see my younger brother, Alex, who lives in LA and attends Cal State-LA. I’m pretty sure that was only his second college football game ever, the other being the snow covered game of Utah vs. Utah State in 2007. No bus troubles on the way back to Salt Lake, although my bus driver’s full bladder created an unplanned pit stop just minutes before reaching Beaver, UT.
September 12-18: The beginning of this week was dedicated to recovering from the MUSS Bus adventure, in addition to really trying to convince myself that BYU was the next school on the schedule. This may have been the most calm week I’ve had in a long time. Just one impromptu meeting at the Alumni House to recap the MUSS Bus trip, discuss some board business, a meeting with the people in the College of Humanities in preparation for the “Game on the Green” at the Union. I feel like the event went pretty well overall, although I think some of their plans anticipated a lot more people than those who actually attended. I also think that if they didn’t charge for some of the food once people were there, it would have gone better. I understood that everything went towards scholarships, but sometimes I think you can sacrifice quality and quantity of food when it is not the main attraction. I think if they charge a small entry price and then make it so that the food inside is free, that would help a lot. However, I feel like it was an overall success. It also feels pretty good to be around a couple hundred other Utah fans when you stomp your rivals into the ground 54-10 in their house. Go Utes!

I am definitely making this its own post. I’ll get to my thoughts on grad school and the football team in another post.

Go Utes!

Changes, unknowns, preparation and making life happen

A new era is here, and I’m not just talking about Pac-12 stuff. I start graduate school this fall, which should be a lot of fun and definitely challenging, and there will be a distinctly different feel to it. Sure, every year is different from the next, but this year will be the first time that I will begin the semester without some close friends attending as well, specifically Lindsay, Zach and Tiff. I will miss them dearly.

With new territory come a lot of unknowns. How will Utah fair in the inaugural Pac-12 season? Who will step up? What changes and adjustments will be made? Will our boosters catch up to the other schools? What will life be like with some of my best friends beginning a new chapter in their lives? Will we stay in tough as much as I would like? Am I really ready for grad school? Is grad school really what I want to do? Am I heading in the direction I want to? What stories will develop in my fifth year at the University of Utah? Will I end up writing a thesis? Which athletes will I tutor this semester? How difficult will it all be?

These questions are not topics that all of a sudden sprung up from the ground and I tripped over them. No, instead I have known that these questions of the future will very soon be questions of the present. These questions of change are ones I have been able to think about for awhile now, but like most things in life, actually dealing with the change is a little bit different than trying to plan for it. And, I’ve always felt it’s easier to deal with the change if I’m at least somewhat prepared for it. These changes have slowly begun to take shape once graduation passed, and they will continue to solidify as the fall rolls on. Thankfully, it’s not like these changes were abrupt. It has been gradual and slow moving, but constant, just like the greater picture of life itself.

I once said that change doesn’t have to be drastic, it doesn’t have to be immediate, and it doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Sometimes I wonder if I was writing/speaking to myself there more so than my audience because there are times when I get worried or stressed about something in life and I feel like a quick decision must be made, but when I remember that most things in life don’t need a split second decision, I calm down a bit. Besides, if something important that I’m doing really does require a split second reaction from me, I’m either playing a sport or I really didn’t do myself a favor by not preparing for whatever that moment was.

A good example of this is studying for tests. Unfortunately, it took me really up to about last year to figure out how I should study for tests, work on projects, and simply just get things done. Since Rome wasn’t built in a day, it makes sense to me that great success, whether it be a good test grade, a successful event, or something like a fun dinner party amongst friends, doesn’t just happen on a whim. I like to joke that winging it is something I do best, but only because my mind is so nuts that many random scenarios have already been played out in my head so that I’m somewhat prepared for whatever we decide. But back to studying for tests. Like most students, I dislike studying. Even more so, I dislike cramming. I never have really done that great on anything I’ve done last minute. I’ve found that it’s so much easier to do little bits or chunks at a time and then review it all with time to spare than to do it all at once. The key is self discipline though, something I wish I really had a lot more of. It’s easy to do something like study or read every day for a few days in a row, but it’s a little more difficult to keep it a habit. It may be simple, but just because something is simple doesn’t mean it’s easy.

Another good example of this is running a marathon. If anyone calls themselves a runner and has run at least a half or full marathon, then you know it’s not exactly easy to just wake up one morning and run one of those suckers. It takes months if you properly train for one of them, and even longer if you want to actually be good at them. Well, let’s be honest, if you really want to be great at anything, it takes a lot of time, work and effort. More often than not, if you just half-ass your preparation or training, once the moment of truth is actually here, you probably won’t do quite as well as you had hoped or could even hurt yourself (trust me, I know firsthand haha). And, despite whatever reasons and excuses I can come up with, we have no one else to really blame but myself.

No one else can study for you. No one else can memorize a passage for you. No one else can truly go to school for you. No one else can train for you. No one else can eat for you. No one else can prepare for you.  No one else can live your life for you.

You don’t need me to tell you the old cliché that life keeps moving on no matter what and no one can stop Father Time. Making up excuses never really gets anyone anywhere, and it is one thing to have respect for someone else or someone respect you, but it’s a really wonderful thing if you can look at yourself in the mirror and respect yourself. Knowing you gave it your all and did everything you could is a great feeling. Sure, not succeeding like you would want to is not always fun, but at least you won’t sit wondering if things would have been better if you had trained or studying harder. In order to have a life, I have to have experiences and actually do stuff. That’s really the only way I know if I’ve prepared enough for the inevitable change that comes with living life.

A poem on friendship revisited

Stumbled upon this poem that I wrote awhile back, but its always good to read it again. I also edited some of it, changed words, punctuation, etc.

"Friendship"

Yesterday is unforgettable, so many great memories from past days and nights.
Sometimes we laughed, sometimes we hugged; sometimes there were even pillow fights.
A dozen years ago I never knew your name; I did not know who you were.
We were young, little, and where we all would end up no one knew for sure.
Our journeys began in different worlds, the dawn of a friendship we did not know.
Not too long ago our paths merged into one, side-by-side and ready to share the road.

Today, it is hard to imagine life without your laugh or smile.
You should know that you are not alone; I am always by your side, every step, every mile.
Right now we are getting through life with each other and friends,
Each day has its ups and downs, always showing us new twists and bends.
Although we are not always near each other, you know I am never far away.
The days go by and time flies, but if you need someone, you know I’ll stop and stay.
It hurts to watch you get down, to know that you are sad.
Seeing it from the outside looking in is hard; I wish I could make the pain not feel so bad.
Sometimes we get lonely, but we always have someone to turn to.
This is not something that happens every day; this friendship is true.

I fear for tomorrow, the days when our exits off this highway are not the same.
We may be in different worlds once again, with only our life destinies to blame.
Sometimes tears fill my eyes when I think of those days of tomorrow.
The days without lunches, backhands, hugs, walks or someone to pick us up when we feel low.
The future is bright for us; so much promise and so much hope from year to year.
Our friendship will always hold a special place in my heart, ever so near and dear.
Yet, I hope the day will never come where I miss these days, when I really miss seeing you.
But it does not matter what happens, my love and trust is unconditional; I am always here for you.

Thoughts on working out at a gym

I just finished a workout at the Field House, and everyday I go I find little things that never change about the gym. Here are some observations I make on a regular basis:

• There's always the men and women who lift with terrible form (bouncing the bar off chest, using momentum, etc.)
• A few guys are always sweating profusely like their bodies are literally sobbing with exhaustion
• There are those on the ellipticals or spinner bikes that never turn up the resistance so they are booking it but hardly breaking a sweat
• Very few people actually put the weight plates back on the racks
• There's almost always one girl who's really good looking that dresses like she knows it, then will occasionally give you the bitch face if she happens to cross your vision path (whether on purpose or not)
• Women will spend more time in the cardio section than the men
• I'm never entirely convinced half the people lifting weights know why they are doing a particular lift
• There's always an old guy who is either super flexible or surprisingly strong
• It always seems like at least one guy there that is wearing a sleeveless shirt needs sleeves
• I love the super competitive old guys on the basketball or tennis courts. Always entertaining.
• Women seem to wear brighter colors than men, or at least something besides white or black.
• If I'm in the middle of a set, I like to watch the people on treadmills and watch their strides. How their foot hits the treadmill, how high they come up, do they shuffle, does their foot come up at a weird angle, etc. fascinates me.
• I catch my self measuring myself to other people and how much we lift sometimes. I wonder how many other people do that?
• Every other time I'm at the gym, there's always that super fit/ripped (but not body builder ripped) girl there that is hard not to watch because her muscles are so well defined, but also because I feel weak in comparison and am just in awe.

There are my random thoughts on the gym for the day. I'm sure I had more while I was there, but these ones always seem to come up enough that I remembered them. 

First blog post, Pac-12, & casual conversations

Hello blogging world! Like the title suggests, this is the first one. Not sure exactly what to start talking about, but a close friend suggested that I express what I would like this blog to accomplish. On that note, I think I will mostly be blogging about sports and things that strike my fancy throughout the days, since those are what I'm most interested in. Just a little background for those of you who don't know me very well, I recently graduated at Utah with a Bachelor degree in Exercise and Sport Science, was selected by the College of Health's professors to be the undergrad speaker at our convocation, been accepted into the Psycho-social Aspects of Sport program, am President of the MUSS (Mighty Utah Student Section) Board (a group of folks I am extremely proud to be associated with), and still have very little of an idea about what the hell I want to do with my life. But I do know that whatever I do decide, it will be done with passion. Hopefully this blog will help reveal some of that passion for things in my life.

If you've known me for a little while, it's no secret to you that I love sports. If you've known me within the past 4 years, then you probably have seen my interest in the University of Utah's athletics. Just over a year ago today (June 16 I do believe), our school joined the former Pacific-10 conference, now the Pac-12! Growing up, my dad loved (still loves) the University of Washington. My parents lived in the Tri-cities area during the Don James glory years, so I suppose that's where that came from. Naturally, since my dad was a huge Husky fan, I grew up a relatively large one. My parents also lived in Minnesota for awhile too, and that's why I'm a Vikings fan, but more on that eventually. Basically, I grew up following Pac-10 sports through high school. Washington, UCLA, Arizona, football, basketball, softball, etc. I loved it all. "Conference of Champions" right? Then, once I entered college, I started to dive into some of John Wooden's life, teachings, etc. and my fascination with those schools only grew. And now they're telling me that my school is joining this elite group of research schools? It still hasn't quite hit me. I failed to mention earlier that I was part of the press conference at the Rice-Eccles tower and helped present Commissioner Larry Scott with a glass block U on behalf of the MUSS! Of course, I had TJ (then President of the MUSS) present it, but standing up there with TJ, Jonathan Bowen, Ellen Stemle & Brynn Whitchurch in front of all that media was something to really try and take in. I still hardly believe that it took place. Simply incredible.

It started to hit me that we are part of the Pac-12 when they released the sports schedules. Stanford, Washington, UCLA all popped up for football, soccer, volleyball and basketball. I still get the chills! I mean these are schools that have their names written all over the college sports history books! Wooden's Bruins' 10 national titles, Mike Candrea's softball teams, Stanford's women Final Four appearances...such rich history! And now we are the in the same conversation as them. I don't believe it will hit me until the conference schedule is actually being played, but to see those names on the schedule just sends shock waves through my system. If you've known me for awhile, you'll know that I'm kind of a history buff about some things, and sports definitely fall into that category.

Today I hiked up to the Living Room with my good friend Kim Sorensen and my roommate of the last few years, Zac Spencer. We tried to run up some of the trail and failed relatively early. One day though... :) We sat at our destination for awhile and pondered quietly to ourselves. I quickly found myself lost in a train wreck of thoughts as I overlooked the valley, airport, I-15, Bonneville golf course, and most importantly to me, the University of Utah. The perspective on it all was humbling in a way. I sat there and said, "It all looks so small, so close together." It made me think that it all kind of really is close together. As we walked back down and reached Red Butte Garden, everything's size came back and it all seemed so big. That's just like life isn't it? Always needing to "step back" and see the "big picture" about things, but as soon as we jump back into it all, that rabbit hole that seemed so small is a crater in the earth we have to cross. On the way down, Zac, Kim and I talked about nutrition. Nutrition? Really? 5 years ago I would have laughed and walked out on you if you told me that I could casually talk in depth (and seriously) about the nutritional benefits of certain foods and diets. Oh how life changes right? :)

Well that first post was MUCH longer than I anticipated. Hope it was worth your while!