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Students abroad have discovered some hobbies to fill
their time
BY ERIK LUND
STATESMAN STAFF WRITERr
ISSUE: 78/24
I find myself sitting in the on-campus laundry room. There’s a TV mounted to the wall in the corner of the room. None of us own TVs, so for the most part, laundrytime is the only time we get to check out a bit of British programing. Without the constant stream of TV and media that we were used to back in the states, and with our computers as our only connection to the outside world, many of us have picked up new hobbies.
Michael Hickel, an undecided student, has started crocheting. Spending most class periods needling away, he has successfully completed several brightly colored yarn headbands. A few others and I have taken up jogging. Kelsey Burns puts us all to shame, however. Her workout routine consists of her version of “stair-climbing,” basically running up and down the three flights of stairs between our flats 60 times, several times a week.
It’s ridiculous. My dad is a runner, but I’m not. My sole claim to fame is making it around the quarter mile Vale Pond three times without stopping. Today I made it halfway around before a tremendous cramp took hold of the upper half of my body, causing me to gasp for air and careen to an early stop. However, a much more popular hobby has recently taken hold of our group.
As Dave Doyle put it in our speech class last Thursday, he has “taken up reading.” The large amount of classrequired reading aside, the majority of us undoubtedly agree that we’ve spent quite a lot of time reading for fun lately. In fact, in the past five months, we’ve read more for fun than in the several previous years combined. Mike Cason burns through at least a book a week, including the entire 500- page Irish History textbook he finished weeks before the class even started. I’ve got three books going myself, including titles by James Joyce, Franz Kafka and Noam Chomsky.
Dave, who’ll be my roomate next year, and I, have gone as far as saying that we renounce the poisonous
laziness TV causes, not to mention the generation of ADD it has helped to create, and we don’t plan on purchasing a TV at all when we get home. Abstaining from TV and reading more often are just two small examples of the internal changes that have occurred within me. I knew beforehand that this year was going to drastically alter my outlook on life.
What I didn’t predict is that some of drastic changes were quite different, and in some cases outright the opposite of my preconceived notions.
