I Joined the Gymnastics Team, but why?
I’m writing this article with the assumption that nobody will read it. In six months I’ll ask myself why I even joined gymnastics. I’m hoping this will help jog my memory then.
Reason #1: I owe my friends a backflip
Sometime during the past year I promised my sailing club friends that I’d do a backflip. It started as a joke, but to me it was a challenge.
I haven’t delivered yet.
It turns out backflips are harder to do than I initially thought, but I’m a man of my word and I owe the sailing club a backflip.
Reason #2: I wanted to push myself socially
After three years of being in the sailing club, I built up plenty of social capital. I didn’t have to go out of my way to meet new people. I didn’t have to awkwardly approach someone and ask them what their name was. It all just felt kind of stale.
I MISS being at the bottom.
I remember when I was a freshman – before I set foot on campus I messaged pretty much every incoming freshman in the business school. I didn’t know it at the time, but that led me to win the freshman Undergraduate Business Council election a few months later.
At McCombs Kickoff, a welcome event, I bounced around every group and talked to as many people as I could. In that day, I probably met over 200 people. That led me to meet my best friend at UT.
In hindsight I was “that guy.” But having nothing to lose led me to do things I otherwise never would have dreamed of.
Flash forward to today, I wanted to start out at the bottom once more and joining a new organization as a senior seemed like the best way to do that.
Reason #3: I wanted to push myself physically
Growing up, I was always the slow, fat, brown kid that you’d never make the mistake picking twice for your dodgeball team. Over time I became pretty active. I began backpacking, cycling, and sailing, but none of those require a high level of physical fitness.
I often joke that the reason I sail was because it’s the only sport where you can drink a glass of whiskey while racing and still win the race. But unfortunately that doesn’t do much good for your health.
The first day I realized that gymnastics pushed me well beyond my current physical limits. After the first day of gymnastics I was sore – that feeling just compounded during the second day. I’m hoping that sooner, if not later, gymnastics will whip me in to shape.
