Today: The Breakdown

4:30 a.m. Alarm goes off. Grumbling and stumbling ensues.

5:15 a.m. I wonder how I am supposed to row if I can only see the faint outline of my hands in front of me.

7:40 a.m. The lady at the Park cafe is probably wondering why I look so sweaty and spandexy this early in the morning. I decide I deserve medium instead of small coffee. And bagel.

8:25 a.m. Am unable to pronounce word "succession" on internet radio station during news cast. Sigh.

8:46 a.m. Get it this time on WICB, which people actually listen to. Am relieved.

9 a.m. Advisor is very excited I am studying abroad in Amsterdam. Also is probably wondering why I am wearing wet spandex at 9 a.m. I hope my crew sweatshirt is somewhat explanatory. I also had to dig my study abroad packet out of my smelly crew bag to show her. It was under my shoes. I obviously succeed at life.

9:45 am. I am showered. Run back to Park to pick up camera for interview. Hygiene has significantly improved, but am still wet.

10 a.m. Yeah, you KNOW I made it to my class on time.

11:40 a.m. CRAP I FORGOT TO BRING BATTERIES FOR SAID CAMERA.

Noon. Yeah, you KNOW I made it to my class on time despite mad dash across campus looking like an insane person.

1 p.m. Interview number 1. Ask man in office if he is Alex. No, I'm Dan, but, um, Alex is a woman. Oh, that's great. Blushing occurs.

1:30 p.m. Call mother to inform her of interview win and social niceties fail.

2:00 p.m. Consume lots and lots of food. Regret excessive food consumption. More sighing.

2:30 p.m. Begin hike to Red Cross.

3:00 p.m. Arrive at Red Cross. Google maps walking estimate freakishly accurate. Begin interview.

3:20 p.m. Still have questions. Bother other lady, who is extremely nice and humors me. People at the Red Cross are super nice. Not such a surprise. Lady comments on Ithaca Crew shirt. She's known Coaches Robinson for 15 years. Of course she has.

3:40 p.m. WHY DO I GO TO SCHOOL ON TOP OF A HILL WHYYYY

3:45 p.m. Call father during walk. Question my sanity for only considering walk DOWN the mountain. Huffing and sweating does not suggest am college athlete. Should not have worn jeans and boots. It's 75 degrees out and sunny. Ithaca, I love you, but it's hard to remember that your weather isn't always horrible.

4:00 p.m. Am pretty sure father is wondering how I am still talking. I'm probably not coherent at this point, and he's probably wanting to like, actually work at work. But I have decided he needs to know every detail about my life plus all my theories and projections about the future. Immediately.

5:08 p.m. Check time as I finish up blog post detailing day that is not even over yet.

5:09 p.m. Decide I am very satisfied with having completed most required activities of the day. Now just working on papers, dinner and a radio meeting to go before I can pass out in bed.

5:10 p.m. Yes, I'm already thinking about bed now.

5:11 p.m. Publish blog post.

Sunshine!

Two days after the worst practice ever, featuring all kinds of natural high-jinks, we rowed in sunny, 70-80 degree temperatures for the next three days. Yeah. It's been awesome. And, well, certainly strange.

In fact, it was so sunny and hot yesterday at our regatta, I got my first ugly uniform tan/burn! At our race we lost to the University of Rochester, but we also dropped 25 seconds off our time from last week. You can't ask for much more than that.

After the race, I headed to my roommate's house, where I was fed amazing food. This evening I'm going back to eat even more, despite my being in a semi-coma from all the insane amount of candy I've received in the past couple days. It is awesome. And also terrible, because I work out practically twice a day and AM STILL GOING TO GET FAT. Maybe.

Or maybe not. Maybe if I close my eyes, those delicious Reese eggs have zero calories.

I'm going to go with that one.

Also, tomorrow is going to be one of the busiest days in my entire life. I'm sure it'll deserve its own post after the fact if I am still alive after it.

Hint: It begins promptly at 4:30 a.m.

I Think Everyone Dies in That Movie

Today, Cayuga Lake decided to recreate the conditions of The Perfect Storm. Then, we rowed on it.

We were even doing the same things! We were catching crabs!

That is a crew joke. So Claire will chuckle at my punny-ness and everyone else reading this will shrug and move on.

It hailed. And the wind gusted to 22 mph. Then it rained more. Then it hailed again. And then my pair partner turned around and cackled out of the absurdity of it all.

The coaches realized it was a bad idea to have us go out way too late, and then there was a lot of commotion just having everyone be able to dock.

Also, we had an erg test today, and I did horribly. In fact, I did so badly I burst into tears at the end of it. So, if we're going to keep with the movie theme, let's just say there's crying in crew. Lots of it.

I'm fine now. Well, at least, I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong and working toward putting it behind me.

I'm pretty sure today was the crew gods just messing with me. I mean, seriously? SERIOUSLY?

I am now going and making myself a huge mug of tea. I am essentially drinking away my feelings, but with Bigelow instead of, say, Jack Daniels. Because that would be illegal. And wrong. I did pay attention in middle school health class, Mom and Dad.

The First 2k

Look who I repped today!

And oh, God, ignore my hair. You read my last post, right?

Anyway, we did our race walk-through yesterday in 18 degree temperatures with 20mph winds. It was pleasant. The University of Virginia crews, who had come to race Cornell, looked pissed they'd ventured past the Mason-Dixon line.

Today was only slightly warmer, but without winds. So we were ready to go, ready to take on William-Smith.

Before the race, we linked arms in a huddle. We made inappropriate jokes and cheered.

Then there was the warm up. Quiet. Focus. A kind of rattling anticipation.

Waiting for our turn. I watched my roommate explode off the start with her boat, oars rocking, water splashing. I was so proud. Just look at us!

Our turn. At the start. Adjustments. Quiet. Attention, row!

We're jumped off the start, but we're together. It's controlled. It's catch up time. Seat by seat. Alexa, our coxswain, is grinding her voice for a fight. Half-way through. They're dying, we're flying.

Then the boat rocks. Our stroke seat's oar rips through her oar lock, jolting us to a complete stop. Ten seconds gone fixing. We're two full boat-lengths behind.

The race is gone. But we're not finished. We finish less than a boat behind them.

First there's the crashing disappointment. The knowledge that we were the faster team, barring small mistakes. But then there's pride. We'd never rowed so well in our lives. We recovered amazingly. We caught them.

My sports life is full of imperfections and almosts. But today's almost doesn't matter, because I realized, I'm playing for the huddle and I'm playing for the comeback.

If we've got that kind of strength in us, I can't wait for the next race.

Mark The History Books

Last year, I was all into looking presentable all the time. No sweatpants ever. I tried these things called "sweaters." I even WORE MAKEUP some days. Today, I realized that I no longer give a crap.

It happened progressively. Sleep time needed to be maximized. Goodbye, matching socks. Showers were penciled in my planner to maximize presentability in class. Then we entered spring season. Presentability percentage was cut drastically in favor of food consumption and ability to get to practice.

Today I went to dinner actually looking like I'd jumped in the inlet after our row. We rowed in freezing rain, and then I went straight to dinner. Realizing this was probably a mistake, I ran into my room after eating, pulled off my sopping clothes, and put on two pairs of sweatpants, two shirts, and my sweatshirt. I am writing to you now as a marshmallow. But a warm marshmallow. I anticipate to melt soon, and it will be awesome.

I was also doing reading today in between classes only to look up and see my second class was going to start in three minutes. So I ran across campus in my slippers and beat the professor there. See? The exercise is obviously working.

I figure on What Not to Wear they always yell at people who dress like they're still in college. So I'm going to embrace the short period in my life where looking disheveled is an acceptable lifestyle choice. Then you can all sick Stacy and Clinton on me and I'll get $5,000 for new clothes. It's win-win.

The fact that I have to wear my spandex to Legislative Behavior every time also confuses my professor, who knows I'm on the team but still acts bewildered every day anyway. "Miss Paulson," he said. "I don't know if we've ever had a party leader who wears this much elastic."

Ithaca Crew Went Down to Georgia

Before this spring break I:

1. Didn't nap or sleep anywhere but a bed.

2. Ate slightly less than, say, an army.

3. Generally stayed indoors.

4. Spent several hours a day on the computer and internet.

5. Saw rowing as an extracurricular activity.

And then Georgia happened. It was a whirlwind of hilarity, intensity, exhaustion, freezing cold, heat, sun, rain, excitement, nerves, and fun.

All of varsity described spring trip as "Eat, sleep, row." I didn't realize how incredibly accurate that was. Except, it didn't include 7 a.m. pre-breakfast yoga. After that, our days were eat sleep row eat sleep row eat sleep. Repeat.

First there was the 18-hour bus ride, during which I would fall asleep for an hour at a time and sometimes sink into a semi-conscious haze wondering what in the world I was doing here. At 7am we stopped at a Cracker Barrell, and one of my teammates actually fell asleep face first on the table. Two hours later, we were rigging and washing boats at the Lake Lanier Olympic Center. And soon, we were on the water for the first time since October, still in our what-day-is-it-what-is-this-oar-thing-OMG-is-that-water? haze.

When we finally arrived at our hotel, two of my roommates perfectly expressed our mixed emotions:

And then I actually took no pictures of us doing any work. Or things like rowing, which you would actually want to see. Instead, I busted out the camera when we had our Wednesday afternoon off and went out to dinner! See?

Ignore the old lady moving in warp-speed in the back of this picture.

Afterwards, we somehow ended up in a party store, doing mature things like this:

For the ride back, we all drifted in and out of consciousness until 7 a.m, when we arrived at Ithaca. Unfortunately, the dorms didn't open until noon. That meant we were sleeping in the gym until we could haul our stuff back to our rooms or sleep in a real bed. So I made my jacket into a pillow, made my crew sweatshirt into my own personal cave, and passed out. On the floor. With a million other people scattered around.

I can sleep ANYWHERE now! I am gaining skills for life in college.

So, in sum, I'm exhausted and have a slight sock tan, but boy, was it worth it.

And now...the season begins!

Feminism Makes Me a Better Student

Sometimes I have moments when I'm positive that I'm right and can argue it effectively. They're few and far between. Usually I sit and stew and then go write about it later.

Then, today happened. In our discussion of the gay rights movement, I got into it when a boy in my class said the costumes, sexuality and frivolity displayed at some gay pride parades are damaging to the movement and the participants are impeding the process of change.

I responded that that very sentiment was in fact damaging, and that suggesting dissent should be channeled only through comfortable archetypes is in itself submitting to the politicized, institutionalized norm. If you are in favor of the equal rights for all people, how can you suggest they must remain palatable to those in control of the status quo? Can we be so limiting as to force our social movements to fit neatly into the U.S. history textbook narratives?

Sure, there are places to challenge that argument. There always will be, because it's an opinion. It's fallible. But I realized then that my newfound participation in the feminist media movement--as a reader, as future contributor--makes me a better politics student. It forces me to challenge ideas from angles I'd never considered before. Reading blogs every day teaches me how to argue a point effectively--it forces me to form my own opinions. To research on my own. To avoid jumping to conclusions. To form my own political identity beyond the walls of my home, my high school, my college classrooms.

I have a vivid memory of a mock- presidential election we did elementary school. I had no idea what was happening, but I knew that I was supposed to vote for Clinton. Because that's who I was told to vote for. My parents are always right. And, to back it all up, all my friends were told to vote for him too. Now I think I've reached a point where my political views are my own. I share a lot of my parents' views, because they're intelligent people. But it's really only now that I have the confidence to disagree with my family and friends and follow my own compass, whether I'm in close company or not.

And I kinda like that.