The Post About How Badminton Mocked Me

I miss Emory University in the fall of each year.


And then I remember.

REQUIREMENT: four courses must include Health Education before graduation.

Yes. I was required to take PE at Emory to adequately earn a Bachelor’s in Sociology and Women’s Studies.

Currently, that would cost you $1,500+ per credit hour.

I took the following:
1. Aerobics: These classes are not fun if they cost a fortune or if they’re free. Boo to the grapevine and the Charleston and my lack of coordination.

2. Tennis: No regrets. I hung posters of Pete Sampras on our dorm door and I lusted after all things K-Swiss. I had a backhand that doesn’t mince words.

3. Badminton: Since I loved tennis, this seemed like an appropriate sister sport. This is accurate if that sister was the result of two first cousins procreating. Badminton is a mean and unforgiving sport.

And that brings us to the pièce de résistance…

4. Swimming.

It didn’t matter if you had taken 132 hours of classes and a graduate course in criminology and written a senior thesis on women in prison and been a teaching assistant and learned to park in a deck with only compact car spaces.

No.

If you couldn’t consecutively swim 10 laps in an Olympic regulation pool, then…

Well, I don’t know what would have happened.

Because I did it. I may have had a mini-stroke in the process, but I did it.

Once.

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