Cabin Fever

I was going to save my blogging for later in the week, but since the first week has failed so utterly (and I’m trapped out of New York City for a third straight day), I figure I shouldn’t count on anything. And I’m starting to get a little bored.

Starting on Sunday, I was supposed to be volunteering for the Pinstripe Bowl. I need experience with these kinds of things to put on my resume if I want to do anything with my life, and it’s the first bowl game in NYC in 50 years. So I signed up to volunteer the entire week; the Syracuse welcome rally on Sunday, street teams on Monday through Wednesday, and Good Morning America on Thursday.

But then it snowed. A lot.

The blizzard started on Sunday, and I’d have to come home during the worst of the storm, so that wasn’t going to happen. The LIRR was shut down all day on Monday, which ended up being okay, because all street team stuff was cancelled anyway. But it’s happening today, and I’m not there because the LIRR’s service is STILL limited. I watched the news and have checked the website, and can’t make heads or tails of train times. I don’t even think the Baldwin station has been plowed yet, if I’ve heard correctly.



Fail.



FAIL.

Come on. This is NEW YORK. It’s not like it’s never snowed here before! This much of a fail would be expected in, say, Miami. But we’ve gotten worse storms in fairly recent memory. So why can I still not get into NYC a full 24 hours after the storm stopped?

So maybe I’ll get to fulfill my commitments starting tomorrow. MAYBE. I feel terrible for emailing the guy in charge every day saying “uh, sorry, can’t make it” … but what else can I do?

>.<

And this is now the third day in a row where I’ve had nothing to do because my plans have been made impossible. I mean, I like doing nothing as much as the next college student, don’t get me wrong. But I was supposed to have things to do! Grrr.


*Deep breath*

That being said, I’ve had a pretty nice few days being stuck inside. I’ve watched a lot of Castle (new episodes start again on January 3rd! YAY!), and found some new obsessions. First, Bath and Body Works’ winter candy apple scent. Every now and then I sniff my hand because it’s just so delicious. Equally as delicious is Trader Joe’s peppermint hot chocolate (or any peppermint hot chocolate, really). The regular stuff just isn’t as satisfying anymore! And finally, Street Corner Symphony. Has anyone else watched The Sing Off on NBC? It’s an acapella group competition show, and it’s only on for five episodes once a year, sadly. But I’m in love with it! Street Corner Symphony was one of the groups on the latest season, and they’re AMAZING! They’re basically all I’ve listened to for the last week or so. I sat here for literally 10 minutes trying to figure out which performance of theirs to link in this post, because they’re all so epic.



But I haven’t just been sitting around. Well, yeah, I have, but some of the stuff I’ve been doing while sitting hasn’t been a total waste of time. I started searching for summer internships today! And I’m scared out of my mind! :P So far, on my list is: the USOC, MLB, SNY, NBC, and ESPN (even though their presentation at Miami a few months ago scared the hell out of me and destroyed my self confidence about being good enough to work there). I’m thinking about applying to Time Inc. (for Sports Illustrated) as well, but that application is due on January 14th, so I wouldn’t even be able to get help from Toppel (the on-campus career center). Would it even be worth it? And I cannot, for the life of me, find ANYTHING about internships with either the Mets or the Yankees. So if they exist, and you know about them, please tell me!

Oooh, actually, I’ll ask the volunteer coordinator for the Pinstripe Bowl about Yankees internships. BAM said the lady!

But Mets? Anyone? Bueller?

Oh, and I fell in love last night. With the Danish Institute for Study Abroad. I spent about an hour on its website, completely not paying attention to the rerun of Castle that was on… and for those of you that know me, that’s a big deal! Haha. I’ve wanted to go to Denmark since my group did a project on it in PAG in fourth grade :). I still want to go to Oxford, but I checked their website and didn’t see any journalism classes (or “tutorials”). If I go through this program, I’d be able to take journalism classes, and have at least one trip built in! God only knows if I can afford it, but that goes for pretty much any study abroad program. Now all I have to do is figure out if I want to go in the fall or the spring, go to the study abroad office to see if everything transfers okay, and… do many, many more things. But having a destination that’s actually feasible is a good first step! :D



I WANNA GO RIGHT NOW!

But for now I guess I’ll just go stalk the LIRR website some more and hope that I’ll have some fun volunteering stories to tell on Friday.

Musings in KIN212

Sport psychology.

You’d think it would be an interesting class, right? Oh, how I wish it was! Every Tuesday and Thursday, I waste an hour and fifteen minutes sitting in a half empty classroom and not paying attention. I know, I know; that’s SO not me! But when the professor (who shall remain nameless) makes it clear that he hates teaching the class, it’s really hard to care about it. I mean, if he doesn’t have the decency to care even a little bit, then why should I? And going to class is COMPLETELY pointless. Question banks for the tests get passed down from semester to semester; study the questions and you’re good to go. The answers are all in the textbook, which, by the way, is completely different from the PowerPoints he uses to teach the class. If you want them (for some bizarre reason), all the PowerPoints are on Blackboard, so there’s no reason to take notes during class. And, to top it off, he doesn’t take attendance, except on the days where so few people show up that being there gives you extra credit. Yes, I’m serious.

So basically, you don’t need to go to class to do well. But, me being me, I go to class. I sit there and don’t really pay attention, but I go. And I’ve gotten extra credit for it at least three times. ;)

But something shocking happened during one class: we learned something that I found to be extremely interesting.

*Pauses while you gasp.*

Believe me, I was shocked. I think I sat there for a solid minute wondering if I really just got something out of sport psych.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give to you: the Pygmalion effect, AKA the self-fulfilling prophecy.

No, not like Harry Potter’s prophecy, guys. That one was fulfilled because Voldemort is an idiot.

In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Pygmalion was a sculptor who, after seeing sisters deny Venus’s divinity and be “reduced” to prostituting themselves, decided he “was not interested in women.” He carved a woman out of ivory, and found it to be so realistic and beautiful that he fell in love with it. He desperately wanted it to become real, and Venus took pity on him and granted his wish.

Hence, the self-fulfilling prophecy: he wanted it so badly that it happened. In another respect, people with low expectations perform poorly, and people with high expectations succeed accordingly.

Now, I’m not the type of person to believe in stuff like this. I don’t believe in love at first sight, nor god, miracles, heaven, or Santa Claus (though the jury’s still out on the Chanukah Armadillo.) But honestly, I think the Pygmalion effect might be my one exception. It sounds completely ridiculous, like one of those things that we’d all love to happen but don’t really expect it to (like love at first sight).

But it’s already happened to me. I wished and wanted myself onto Endurance, didn’t I?



I can think of no other explanation for how I ended up being picked. I mean, my audition tapes were good, but were they better than 10,000 others? Really? I highly doubt that. But I did have one thing over everybody else: nobody – NOBODY – wanted it more than I did.

And then it happened.

Sure, I didn’t win. But in the grand scheme of things, I came closer to winning than 10,000 other kids my age. Making it onto the show was a huge victory in itself, as was making it through the right to stay (in some respect – much love to the girls! <3), and getting onto a team. Things, uh, sort of went to hell from there, but nobody else that has ever been on the show can say they had the same experience as me. Four and a half years removed, I’m glad everything happened the way it did. It gave me an experience entirely my own, and made me a stronger person.

Ahem. Tangent over.

But back to what I was saying, I wanted to get on Endurance with a burning passion. It’s kind of the same as my USOC passion, just in a much more concentrated version; the Olympics stretch out for years and years, but my Endurance obsession was crammed into just about two. It was a very short, very wild ride.



Haha! Couldn’t resist! :D (Please, someone tell me you get it...)

Wow, could I be any more scatterbrained right now?

ANYWAY.

For Endurance, I wasn’t the strongest. I probably wasn’t the smartest. I wasn’t the tallest (or the shortest, so shut up! :P), or the prettiest, or the most outgoing… but I was the biggest fan. The producers and casting directors saw that in me, and picked me because of it.

For the USOC internship, I might not be the most qualified. I won’t be the oldest, nor the most experienced. But I can tell you right now, and with complete certainty, I want it more than anyone. Hopefully there’s the USOC equivalent of 3Ball Productions’ Mark Levine that’ll do the same as he did!

But I’m not content to sit around and let Venus or an equivalent higher power turn my proverbial statue into a woman. I’m going to work AND wish. That should cover all my bases, right? ;)

Who Said Meeting An Olympian Would Be Easy?

I rolled out of bed this morning at 8:45, thinking that under NO circumstances should I be awake this early on a Saturday. If I had my way, it would be at least another two hours before I would even think about getting up. But in the grand scheme of this assignment, waking up early was the least of my worries!

Let’s rewind, shall we?

On the first day of the semester, Dr. Mullane told my leadership class that we’d have a semester-long assignment to interview a leader in the field we want to enter one day. We’d choose our subject, interview them, observe them in action, and then present our findings in a powerpoint to the class at the end of November. This is all for us, she said. She was adamant that we find someone with a job relevant to what we want to do so we could begin to network, make some connections, and maybe find a job/internship with them.

Immediately, my thoughts go to Colorado, the headquarters of the USOC. Then, to my bank account. There’s no way I could afford to fly to Colorado for an interview for an assignment.

Fairly undeterred, I hit the internet, certain that there had to be SOMETHING down here related to the Olympics. An NGB (national governing body), at the very least. But as the list of fair-weather sports dwindled down to nothing, the closest I could find was USA Water Skiing in Polk City (over four hours away by car).


Nope.

Starting to get a little desperate, I went to Dr. Mullane’s office hours to ask (beg, plead…) for help. She pointed me in the direction of Paul Resnick. I’m not sure what exactly his title is, but I’m pretty sure he’s in charge of internships in the sport administration department. So he’s got a super fat Rolodex of contacts. ;)

Now, I don’t usually toot my own horn very much, but in this case… TOOT TOOT! My timing couldn’t have been more impeccable. Resnick told me that, that very night, he had someone distantly involved with USA Wakeboarding coming to speak to his classes. He told me to drop by at the end of class, around 7:00, to talk to him and see if he had any ideas about who I could talk to.

So at 7, I headed over to Allen Hall, where Resnick introduced me to Jonathan Strauss. He had taken a class with Dr. Mullane and knew the assignment I had to do, and spent a few minutes thinking about possible options for me. Finally, he gave me his card and told me to email him, and he’d have someone for me then. Thinking that that was better than nothing, I thanked him, and left. I was halfway down the hall when I heard the door to the classroom open.

“Wait! I’ve got it!”

Jackpot!

Jonathan told me that he’d get me in touch with Gary Hall, Jr. He told me he was recently an Olympic swimmer, that he and his father were the only father/son pair to each have competed in three Olympic Games, and that he’s still involved in the Olympic movement. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but I didn’t think much of it as I thanked him profusely and left again, for real.

Kind of excited about where this project was potentially going, I decided to Google Gary Hall, Jr. to see what I was getting myself into. I did an image search, and my reaction, after my jaw hit the floor, was; “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” (Seriously. Ask Brittany, she was there.)

I REMEMBER him! And everyone else should too! Think for a minute: in 2004, the Olympics were in Athens (and so was born my desire to go to Greece. But that’s beside the point). This was when the world was introduced to Michael Phelps, so if you weren’t watching hours and hours of swimming, you had some serious patriotism issues. There was another swimmer that, honest to god, I thought looked like a cartoon character come to life. He was tan and muscular (obviously), with perfectly coiffed blonde hair, and lots and lots of blindingly white teeth. But to make it even better, he wore a star spangled silk robe out to the pool before his races. I referred to him as Captain America, not gonna lie! Imagine my surprise when I realized that Captain America is Gary Hall, Jr.!


Seriously, tell me this guy doesn't look like a cartoon!

So I emailed Jonathan, who forwarded my email to Gary Jr. (I think?). Either way, the next day I got an email from Gary Sr., saying that Jr. recently moved to Seattle, but if I wanted to do my assignment on “the original model” (his words! :D), he’d be more than happy to help me out.

I was a tiny bit disappointed, because it would’ve been really cool to interview an Olympian I clearly remembered watching on TV; Gary Sr. was a bit before my time. But still, he’s a freaking Olympian. And he was offering to help me. So I thanked him profusely (I feel like I do that a lot…) and told him that the original model would be fantastic!

And then I looked him up. Not only did he compete in three Olympics, but he won three medals, two silvers and a bronze. And now he’s a vice president of US Olympians (USO). But the most exciting part?



HE WAS THE FLAG BEARER FOR TEAM USA DURING THE CLOSING CEREMONIES IN 1976! CAPS LOCK CANNOT EVEN EXPRESS HOW EXCITING THAT IS!

Ahem. So anyway, I told him that part of the assignment was to observe him “in action.” He told me that the Olympic Congress would be held in Fort Myers on the weekend of November 6th, and he’d be giving a presentation about WorldFit (the adopted cause of the USO), and he invited me to come along. Needless to say, I was pretty much over the moon! That was all the information he had at the moment, so he said he’d let me know when he heard more.

Some time passes. More time than I was entirely comfortable with (you know me, always worrying!). So I emailed him again, asking for more details, and he said that all he knew was that he’d be presenting on the 6th. I’d asked him for the venue, but he sort of ignored that question… but I was like, okay, that’s fine, deep breaths. I’ll get it later on.

Then there was the issue of getting to Fort Myers. It’s two hours away by car, and I don’t have a car. It’s three hours by bus, and did I really want to spend 6 hours on a bus in a single day? -_- No. Hooray for having grandparents living in the area! I felt terrible for asking them to make such a long drive with me, but they eventually agreed.

At this point, it was Halloween weekend, and I was getting scared. I didn’t know where I’d have to be going, or what time on Saturday. So I emailed him again, and what did he tell me? That he’d just found out that the foundation was over budget, so they weren’t sending him after all.

Say it with me: WOMP. WOMP. WOMP.

My anxiety was now in high gear. I asked him when I’d be able to meet with him, and he said he’d be in Miami next weekend (aka now :P). Of course, I answered with a YESPLZ! WHEN? WHERE?

And, uh, he didn’t so much answer my questions. After several more emails of “give me a time and a place and I’ll be there if it kills me,” we reach this past Tuesday. I get an email from him saying “I’m leaving on Thursday to go to Sioux Falls, South Dakota for the weekend, but if I’ll meet with you this week if you can drive down to my house in the Keys.”

Keep in mind, this was Tuesday. He was leaving on Thursday. There are no other words for it – I flipped a shit. He was telling me to DRIVE (he knows I don’t have a car) to the KEYS (all of them?) the NEXT DAY (despite class and work?). And he’d be gone for the weekend? HE TOLD ME HE’D BE IN MIAMI THAT WEEKEND! I seriously thought he was about to bail on me. If he had, I’d be screwed. SO. ROYALLY. SCREWED. I almost cried, and definitely ripped some hair out of my head. (This explains my emo facebook status that night, in case anyone was wondering. :P)

I emailed him back, basically saying “HAHAHAHANOPE! When are you going to be back in state? -________-“

His answer? Friday night.

…Umm, since when are Thursday and Friday considered “the weekend”?

I wanted to laugh and cry with relief. He invited me to his house in Miami Beach for Saturday (today!) at 11 am.

So there I was, waking up at an ungodly (for a Saturday) hour of the morning and getting ready to brave the Miami-Dade public transit system to have an interview with an Olympian. OH. No big deal, right?

Well, this “no big deal” caused my stomach to only allow me to eat half a bagel for breakfast. A bagel with butter, not cream cheese – the dining hall had only been open for 15 minutes when I got there, and the cream cheese wasn’t out yet. Faaaaaaantabulous.

I made it to the train station on time, but the train was over 10 minutes late, which made me miss the bus I was planning on taking from the Earlington Heights station. I had to sit there for a while, worrying about taking the right bus, being in a strange neighborhood I’d never been to before, and, OH YEAH, interviewing an Olympian.

…And being glad that I only ate half a bagel for breakfast. This is where I threw out the other half.

The next bus got there at around 10:45. Thanks to the super awesome (/sarcasm) bus driver, I paid $3.00 for a $2.35 fare because she didn’t tell me that the machine doesn’t give change until AFTER I put the third single in. Super. But I got off at the right stop, and walked the rest of the way to his house.

Ya know how, when you don’t want it to, time seems to go by really fast? Well, that’s how it seemed with the streets. I started out on 41st, and then all of a sudden I was on 37th, and then 34th, and then 31st (my destination). And I was looking at street signs SO CAREFULLY. It was weird. o_O

Luckily I had Google-mapped the house the night before, otherwise I wouldn’t have known what to do; I couldn’t find the number! The front yard was gated off, so I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do; do I just open the gate and walk in? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of a gate? But then I heard movement on the side of the house. So I walked over there, and there he was. Getting a garbage can for his wife, who was working on her garden in the backyard.

Lesson: Olympians are very, very normal. Who knew?

He took me into the backyard and introduced me to his wife, Mary, who’s super nice. We sat at the table they have out there, and we talked. Well, he talked. I listened and asked questions. He’s a very soft-spoken, reserved kind of guy, so at first I was sort of afraid that he might just be wanting to get this over with. But I realized after a while that he’s just low key. He gave me lots of information – I have five (5!) pages of handwritten notes – and we talked for almost exactly an hour. He’s awesome. He’s really, really passionate about what he does; he very obviously loves and appreciates his wife; and he’s so proud of Gary Jr., bragging that his son’s Olympic career was more successful than his own.



After I was done with questions for my assignment, I got a bit more personal and asked if he knew how I should begin to get involved with the USOC. He said that the USO isn’t directly involved with the USOC (which I find completely bizarre), but that I should definitely try interning with them. I told him that’s my short-term goal, and he said he’d be happy to write a letter of recommendation for me.

Let me say that again.

He said he’d be happy to write a letter of recommendation for me.

A vice president of the USO. Writing me a letter of recommendation. For an internship with the USOC.

I think I managed to choke out “Oh my god, yeah, that’d be fantastic, thank you!”

And then I asked him if I could be a total nerd and take a picture with him. :D



He really put his arm around me like he meant it. It wasn’t one of those “this is awkward, I don’t really know you, let’s get this over with” kinds of things. It was more of an “I like you! Let’s take a picture together!” and it made me happy!

Then he took me inside (!!!) and got me a copy of the WorldFit program information and some volunteer cards. And I met one of his sons! I don’t know his name (because the internet only deems Gary Jr. worthy of being mentioned), but he knew exactly who I was and why I was there! It was exciting!

And then… that was it. I shook his hand, thanked him profusely (again), and let myself out. I practically skipped back to the bus stop and called my parents (for a good reason this time! YAY!). I waited for ages for a bus to finally get there, but I paid the right fare the second time! And the train took a little while too, but I was totally fine with that – suddenly, I was a pro at Miami-Dade transit. It’s no harder than NYC, and most certainly no sketchier.

And now I’m back at school, so glad that the assignment is over and wondering if it all actually happened.

I really want to thank everyone that helped me out on this one. Dr. Mullane, thank you for forcing me so far out of my comfort zone that all I could stomach was half a bagel – it was worth it! Paul Resnick, thank you for thinking to (and being willing to) introduce me to Jonathan Strauss, who I want to thank for being a freaking genius. And finally, to the Hall family, thank you for not thinking I’m crazy and weird, and for being so nice and welcoming. And Gary Sr. – you rock. SO HARD. :)

Next hurdle: getting an A.

But thankfully, that’s all on me!

And Away We Go

Wow. Here I am, in Blog World. Or, more aptly put, Serious Blog World. Or Write-Your-Entries-in-Microsoft-Word-Before-Your-Blog World. Oh yes. My game face is SO on right now.

Oooh, I’m starting this at 4:44. I like the number four. Good omen. :)

But anyway!

I’ve wanted to start a “real” blog (as opposed to my half-assed Xanga) for a while, but was always afraid of not having anything to write about. Honestly, my daily life is NOT that interesting. But now that some more interesting stuff should be happening in the near future, I feel like this is a good time to start.

An important piece of information: I love the Olympics.

For those of you that know me in any kind of significant way, this fact is super obvious. You’re probably raising your eyebrows at me and wondering why I bothered to state something worthy of a giant ‘DUH!’. Well, it’s because that’s the purpose of this blog; my journey en-route to the US Olympic Committee.

And that journey begins now.

I want to work for them someday. No, scratch that: I WILL work for them someday. I WILL intern with them someday sooner (during the summer of 2012 if all goes as planned. London, anyone?). But before that, I need to work on getting there. This blog will chronicle all things relevant to that.

Of course, creating this blog at this exact moment is a bit premature. Yes, I have a pending interview with former Olympic medal-winning swimmer (and a current VP of US Olympians) Gary Hall, Sr. (tomorrow! Eek!) And yes, I could potentially be going to Greece this summer to volunteer at the Special Olympics with my school. Key word: potentially. Though this week "potentially" has turned into "maybe" has turned into "probably not." More on that in the future. To be honest, I’m starting to freak out a little bit at the lack of knowledge. It took a greatly increased frequency of phone calls home to finally begin to breathe normally again. Word to the wise: parents make great therapists. :)

Since this first post will be functioning mostly as an explanation, it would probably be remiss of me not to explain myself, title-wise and URL-wise.

“Swifter, Higher, Stronger” = the Olympic motto. Citius, altius, fortius. Pretty self explanatory. It’s all about challenging yourself, improving and achieving.

Just my luck, however, was the fact that someone got to this URL before me. Trust me, it was a pretty nice “womp womp womppp” moment. So I hit up Google, hoping that the brilliant folks over there would give me some kind of 10-20 character inspiration. And when does Google ever fail? (Actually, I’ve seen it happen, so let’s not go there.) I stumbled across mapsofworld.com, which told me this:

“A friend of Baron Pierre de Coubertin, Father Henri Martin Didon, of the Dominican order, was principal of the Arcueil College, near Paris. An energetic teacher, he used the discipline of sport as a powerful educational tool.

One day, following an inter-schools athletics meeting, he ended his speech with fine oratorical vigour, quoting the three words "Citius, Altius, Fortius" (faster, higher, stronger).

Struck by the succinctness of this phrase, Baron Pierre de Coubertin made it the Olympic motto, pointing out that "Athletes need 'freedom of excess'. That is why we gave them this motto … a motto for people who dare to try to break records."”

(Baron Pierre de Coubertin is the founder of the modern-day Olympics. If you didn’t know that, for shame! :P)

The freedom of excess. I like it. There aren’t many places in my life where I allow myself to get to the point of excess, but the Olympics is definitely one of them. Just ask my Olympics-themed Bat Mitzvah… and the Olympic flag currently draped over the back of my desk chair… and the shirts I have from every Games since 2002… and the Team USA sweatshirt I all but live in during the winter months… and the DVD of highlights from Beiing 2008 that’s sitting on my shelf… and the countless hours I spent in front of the TV, giving up my social life, while the Vancouver Games were going on… and my plans to go to Sochi in 2014… and, ya know, my dream to work for the USOC. And this list isn’t even all encompassing! Pshh, and people think I’m obsessed with Castle? I mean, let’s be honest, I totally am, but that obsession pales in comparison to my lifelong love-fest with the Olympics.

So this is my place to ‘excess’ to my heart’s content! Join me, won’t you?