The Advent of Fall

I woke up this morning at 6:45 am, like I usually do, except when I left for work something was different—there was frost on the ground. I checked weather.com when I got to work and sure enough it said that it was only 30 degrees out. Our first night of the year at below freezing temperature—this can only mean the long, slow road to a Minnesota winter has begun. Before we will know it, we will be entrenched in mounds and mounds of white, powdery snow. The thought is sad and anticipatory at the same time. I, for one, like the coolness of fall much more than the frozen wasteland temperatures we experience during our winter season here. If the weather could stay at 70 degrees and slightly cloudy perpetually anywhere in the world, I would live there.

The positive about the coming of winter, is the waning fall season. The leaves will start to turn colors and I will be immersed in nature’s beauty here at SJU. No doubt there will be many days in the coming month or so where I will completely blow off any work I have to go gallivant off into the woods for a nice peaceful reverie or for getting some great nature photos. Hopefully, I’ll have some company with me on some of the walks I plan on taking. Nature is just so beautiful during the fall season that I can’t imagine why people wouldn’t want to be outside and surrounded by it, especially when you’re blessed with a campus such as ours that has thousands of acres of woods and five lakes. I couldn’t imagine living in a city where the only spot of nature you have is the local park or your front lawn. It just seems like that would be so depressing.

On another note, the inner turmoil of the frisbee team has started once again. I thought that senior year might be a little different as I thought some of the problem players left, but we seem to be back at where we get every time tournaments creep up—bickering and bitching and overanalyzing. Supposedly one small comment I made about my going for a run might be more productive than having a goof-around practice set some nube freshman off and he proceeded to bitch to the captain about it. This is a club sport here, not ladies aide, so come to play and leave the talking for later. This little bit of complaining from a nube set up a huge email flame war over the state of our team. It’s stupid stuff like this that makes me realize over and over that a club team can’t operate without a forceful, strong captain, or a coach. You can’t be everyone’s friend and please everyone all of the time. Sometimes people have to get stepped on for the good of the team. Sure, they might be miffed, but the team will be better for it. When I started I wasn’t given any special treatment—I was thrown into the mix with the experienced players and I had to learn to play with them. Why should we give the nubes this year so much special treatment? I don’t get it, but I guess it doesn’t matter what I think because everyone else who thinks they should and could run the team try to without looking at what the team needs or who should lead the team. I guess I’m just going to step back again and go out to play. Let’s just hope I don’t get screwed again this year.