Feel the Burn

Eugene Wallingford recently wrote a couple blogs (Got To Begin Again and Anger and Starting Again) about the effort to get back into a sport after spending some time away. The timing was perfect for my own experience with getting back into tennis. I started playing semi-regularly back in middle school and put in four years on my high school team. When I went to college, initially, I played in intramurals and some with the tennis club because UNI does not have a men's tennis team (hurray Title IX!) for me to attempt to walk-on. As the years went on, I played less and less as I got busier and busier. I had only played a handful of times the last couple of years.

This fall, Curt, a friend of mine, really wanted to play against me after he had played all summer. We started playing once or twice a week. However, I continued my bad habits of playing lazily and not hitting amazing shots. Also, he always wanted to play matches, sometimes with only a few minutes of warming up, rather than to simply hit around. Matches are great, but when I have not played much in the last couple of years, I prefer some time to rediscover my shots. My shots started coming back, but it was rather irregular. My serve never was better than mediocre, my forehand became decent, and my backhand was hit or miss depending on the day. Towards the end of the warm weather, I started to return to the net and volley some. It was not exceptionally pretty. If I am not mistaken, I believe I completely whiffed on a couple overheads. Still, it was a lot of fun getting back on the courts.

This spring semester, I am taking Personal Wellness because it is required to graduate as part of the Liberal Arts Core. Think of Personal Wellness as a health class lecture combined with an aerobics lab which is P.E. without the fun games. You would think they could at least let us play one day of dodgeball. I could write an entire blog ranting on how much I dislike this aspect of Personal Wellness. However, there is also a skill lab for which I am taking Beginner's Tennis. I have only seen them offer Intermediate Tennis once in the four years I have attended UNI. Thus, it is tennis in which there are a lot of unskilled players, but at least I get to play.

We have spent the last few weeks hitting against the wall in a gymnasium because it is cold outside. There was snow falling today as I went to class. The nice thing is while the new people are learning to hit forwards, backhands, serves, and volleys semi-consistently, I am working on regaining my previous prowess. My forward is back to decent, my backhand is decent and still hit or miss, and my volley shots are pretty bad. However, my serve is coming back strong! My overhead was looking pretty good too when the instructor called me out to demonstrate to the class yesterday. Let us just say I was a bit nervous considering it had been a few years since I had consistently hit overheads. I think the service practice helped though because I looked pretty good. Now I am looking forward to going outside onto the courts so I can start working on really playing with my serve.

So what is the point of all this rambling? We started doing some footwork and movement drills at the beginning of class this week. I love them and am putting in the 120% I usually do with such things. The result of this is I have noticed my legs being slightly sore along with some fatigue in the days following. The weird thing is I find myself smiling when I feel the soreness or fatigue. I actually am finding that I missed it. I am not sure whether it is because the discomfort is somehow connected in my brain with the joy of playing tennis or if it is because I am realizing I am really starting to get back into this. Either way, my legs are a bit tired and I would not have it any other way. Now if it would just warm up outside so I could play tennis outside of class with friends.

End of the School Year

You know it's the end of the school year when:

• it takes you 30 minutes to drag yourself out of bed to go to class
• your girlfriend misses you so much, she is happy just to get an opportunity to talk to you via instant messenger
• you remember enjoying the nice weather during spring break through a window because you were stuck in the library doing research
  
• it is still snowing, but at least you can find your car
• the police were called in for a domestic disturbance last night when neighbors heard you fighting with your compiler code
• you were happy the police were called in because your code was kicking your butt
• you spend your morning writing a blog rather than doing homework because you are still not on talking terms with your code
• you speak of your code in terms of a bad relationship with a spouse
• you have finally recovered from straining a muscle playing drums on Rock Band because you did not have the time to play in three months
• Duke failed to make the Elite 8 again despite always being in the dance
• your professor gives a lecture on the military aspects of the Assyrian Empire and The Illiad comes to mind instead of Call of Duty 4
  

What I Need

There's a new game running around the web. It is called "What I Need." To play, all you have to do is search on Google for " Needs". So, in my case, I searched for "Shawn Needs". Then just take the top 10 listings and voila! Anways, here is what I got:

1. Shawn needs to decide who he wants to spend the rest of his life with
2. Shawn needs to pee
3. Shawn needs a project
   
4. Shawn needs ecological research
5. Shawn needs a car
6. Shawn needs a car (These are officially two different url's as you can see. Apparently, I just really need a car)
   
7. Shawn needs a mommy
8. Shawn needs a makeover
9. Shawn needs to clean his car
10. Shawn needs this t-shirt

After looking the list over, I find it a bit disturbing how true it really is. I do need to pee. I have been destined to buy a new car as soon as I can afford one. Every day that goes by, I like my current car less and less. My car also could desperately use a cleaning. It is no where nearly as bad as many college students' vehicles, but it is way worse than what I prefer. As for the t-shirt, I love Monty Python! I already own an "I'm not dead yet!" t-shirt. This would go nicely with the collection. I suppose you could count the makeover one too if that includes a haircut. I have been busy enough and at the same time too lazy to care that I am beginning to return to my 'fro days from high school. The shaving occasionally gets neglected too. The project one could be interpreted too. I have way too many projects going on the way it is, but I do definitely need to finish a project. I just do not need a new one. I am not sure what to make of the ecological research one, however. I will leave it with the others for my readers to speculate on since I know they will have a few things to say about them.

Graduation

As of right now, I am intending to graduate on December 19th of this year. By my count, that means I have exactly 272 days left of college. I remember graduating from high school. Everyone was talking about how they did not want to leave and how they would miss their friends. I felt completely different. I was ready to move on. If you ask me, my junior year was more like a senior year whereas my senior year was almost like an encore. I put a lot of time and effort into excelling at all the various activities I was in during my junior year. I definitely made the most improvement. I also probably had the most drama that year, but I guess that is what high school is for. How else are you supposed to start building your character? By the time my senior year rolled around, I knew where I was going to college, and I had a scholarship locked up in October. I was primarily kicking back and enjoying my last chance to do everything. In some ways, I think maybe I should have cared a little more about the outcome than how much I enjoyed just participating. Still, I am perfectly happy with how high school turned out for me. I knew everything I did was my last and it could not be any other way. Why worry or be sad about it then? Finally, graduation came and I was more than happy to cap off my high school experience with the traditional ceremony.

Now I am nearing the end of my college years. Today is the last day of my final spring break. I have to go back to class tomorrow and all the homework that comes with it. I will spend one final summer living in Des Moines working as an intern for Principal Financial Group. I will return to Cedar Falls in August for four months of classes, homework, and work. There will also be one final UNI football season to enjoy. I have only missed four home games the entire time I have been attending UNI. They were mostly due to family events such as a wedding, a couple birthdays, and Thanksgiving. However, I think I more than made up for it by being in the marching band my freshman year and going to the national championship game in Chattanooga, Tennessee in 2005. As friends and family can attest, I live and die by the success of the UNI football team every fall.

Still, as I sit here thinking about needing to get some homework done (I have put off almost all of it this entire week), I cannot help thinking how much I will not miss the classes and the homework. I love the access to professors and all the knowledge. I hate the time some professors expect from their students. This particularly applies to the liberal arts core professors. The classes I have enjoyed the most are by far the ones where the professor realizes we have lives and would like to do more with them than their class. I probably retain more information from these classes too because I find myself becoming more immersed in them and enjoying them more as well. I had one professor once tell me their thoughts on how much homework a student should have per hour spent in class. Based on their formula and my calculations of a typical college student's needs for sleep, eating, showering, and work, a college student needed 172 hours in a 168 hour week. Awesome...

The more college drags on, the more I find myself missing free time to hangout with friends, play videogames, watch sports, or tinker with my latest techno-toys. I have realized this as it is primarily what I spent my spring break doing besides preparing to move to Des Moines for the summer where I have the time and money to do all these things as well. I remember people telling me when I was in high school that college was the time to get your hobby projects done because otherwise you would never have time again. Looking back, I just laugh at that. College is precisely what gets in the way of me having the time to do them. By the time I get to my breaks, I am so burnt out, I usually get very little done. I realize what I classify as hobby projects has changed quite a bit, but I will still have more time once I am done with class. You can tell me I am wrong, but I will not listen to you. You can tell me having a family and kids gets in the way, but I will tell you I count that as a hobby project because you would not choose to go that route unless you get some sort of pleasure out of it. Having to go to Little League games, soccer practice, and dance recitals sounds just fine to me. I still take time to sit at Little League games or watch the Little League World Series on television.

Long story short, I am going to graduate soon. I am not sad about moving on with my life. I will treasure my final nine months, and then I will continue to go forward. I will come back to hangout with friends and go to UNI sports from time to time, but I will not be depressed or say my best days are behind me. Graduation, here I come.

March Madness - Round 1

After the first round of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, I have successfully predicted 24 of the 32 winners. Five of the games I missed were settled by a combined total of 12 points including a 2OT game and a 1OT game. A sixth miss was settled by 8 points, but it went right down to the wire. Unfortunately, I have lost 5 of my Sweet 16 teams already including West Virginia who I had going to the Elite 8. However, my power teams are all still largely intact even if it meant they had to scrape by to get there (*cough*Pitt*cough*).

Despite having a rough day on Friday with Boston College, West Virginia, and Wake Forest getting upset, I went to bed with a smile on my face. Watching Siena drain shots with a few seconds left in regulation and overtime to force further play along with the game-winning three at the end of the second overtime was awesome! I had Ohio State University winning, but I do not care. That was exciting! To make matters even more exciting, Bohanon was raining three's when it mattered most for Wisconsin to upset Florida State in another overtime game happening at the exact same time. Again, I had Florida State winning, but that game was worth the loss. A great way to end the first round!

Busy Bee

Sorry about the recent lack of blogs. Things have been extremely busy and I have not had the time to put anything together. I still have some ideas I would like to work on from the Cyber-Defense Competition I competed in back in February. Otherwise, I was busy with a Resistance 2 tournament hosted by Gamebattles, Insomniac Games, and SCEA. My team managed to break into the top 64, but was knocked out in the first round by the #3 seed. We collected $450 total ($112.50 per individual) in prize money. The tail end of the tournament found me lying on a couch most of my days due to coming down with mono. I only started to recover from that in the last two weeks, almost all of which has been spent catching up with school work and studying for tests. I am on spring break currently, but I have been kept busy celebrating family birthdays, spending time with Jess, doing homework, and looking for an apartment in Des Moines for the summer. I will probably spend the rest of it doing homework and watching the NCAA tournament on tv. One bit of good news is I acquired another computer to play with. It is an ancient machine from home that is no longer being used. It has been nicknamed "The Beast" despite its meager 233MHz processor. I bought a few pieces of networking hardware off of Newegg which will allow me to really start tinkering with The Beast. Now I am off to eat some Wheat Thins, watch some UFC fights, and relax a little bit before heading to bed early for a good night's sleep.