When it’s time to sign up for classes, I always like to leisurely peruse Temple’s course schedule books. I skim over subjects like Social Work, Early Childhood Education, Military Science, and Portuguese.
Before long, I’m knee deep in gym class. No, I’m sorry, Kinesiology class.
Swimming, backpacking, basketball, Tae Kwon Do, they all sound interesting and exciting to me. Two credits to play a couple inspired rounds of racquetball or fencing each week? I’m there.
Sounds like an easy A, too.
You show up, you break a sweat for a couple minutes, and you leave. Sorry buddy, it just isn’t gonna be that easy. In fact, it’s gonna be hard!
For tennis, you have to write a paper, you have to pass physical tests, and you have to be good. The girl who was naive enough to take the class got a C. Her average in flirting is a 4.0.
Students who have taken weight lifting now know that you have to raise your weights to pass the test. If you max out early in the semester, you’re screwed. You’ll either have to bench press 300 pounds or fail. That makes for good television, but ridiculous academics.
I’m taking Aikido this semester because I thought it might be fun to learn a martial art. Little did I know that I’d be struggling to get a B, sprinting to Anderson Hall for my next class, studying hard for a written final, and waking up at 8 a.m. so I could have enough time to get my uniform on!
It’s still an excellent class. It’s just perplexing that it may send my fragile and majestic GPA a few decimal points down the toilet. And it’s a shame that I have to weep, drink alone and have so many self-hating binges of dirty women, chocolate cake, and horse tranquilizers because of it.
These Kinesiology teachers could make any fun activity hard.
Imagine beer drinking, hot-chick spotting, or massage class. Everyone would sign up. But, damn it, they’d make you read the Magna Carta after drowning yourself in 7 beers.
They’d force you to get the knots out of Barbara Bush’s feet. They’d give you quotas for finding hot chicks and a rigorous time limit. (Note to reader: regardless, nothing would deter me from enrolling in any such “hot-chick spotting” class. Nothing.)
“Why do they do this?” you ask. “Shouldn’t gym be fun? Shouldn’t you be able to get an A if you show up most of the time, put in a decent effort, and smile?” You could, but that would be too easy.
Folks, this reminds me of my cooking teacher in the eighth grade. Man, she made us fry bacon and make little cookies. It seemed like a sweet class, but she graded us on the spotlessness of our tables, the quality of our papers and dishes, and our participation. I got a bad grade. I’ll never forget that cooking teacher. And that’s the point.
The Kinesiology teachers of the world have a sense of pride. They know that you signed up for their class just to piss all over them, play some volleyball or water polo, and never set foot in Pearson or McGonigle Hall again. After years of that treatment, they’ve grown thick-skinned.
They set traps for us now. Every now and then you’ll see “Long Distance Spitting,” “High Impact Sex” or “Poker and Cigar Smoking” in the course schedule. The class will fill up in two seconds with seniors aching for something stupid and painless to take for their last semester.
Little do they know that they’ll probably have to spit 10 yards by the end of the semester, engage in masochistic auto-erotica in front of a class of 30 or win five straight rounds of poker — sevens wild — while sucking down three cigars.
Of course, this is all a joke. But, that’s the point, isn’t it? Temple’s Kinesiology teachers don’t want us to think they’re the laughingstock of the university.
Just a couple of guys in sweat pants and Speedos out to slap us with good grades and a couple of credits as readily as they slap our asses after a good play? No, they want to fester in our minds for all eternity by blemishing our report cards with sub-par scores.
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