When I attended the information sessions at the study abroad office, they told me all about the wonderful experience I could have attending a university in a foreign land. I heard from students who had taken similar trips who mentioned how much you grow as a person, the interesting people you meet, and the memories you will make that stay with you for a lifetime.
And for the most part, the friendly people in the study abroad office (the same people who have some odd fascination with making you fill out as many forms as possible) and the older students I spoke with were correct. It has been a wonderful experience attending a university in a foreign country. I have grown as a person (both emotionally and physically - I now stand a solid 5'10" and three-quarters), I've made interesting friends, and have had adventures that will stay with me for a lifetime.
But there is a major problem with studying in Scotland (other than the country's fear of offering free refills or the disconcerting fact that Daylight Savings Time occurred a week earlier here with virtually no announcement, causing my girlfriend to miss her flight home), which has led me to one inescapable conclusion. All the people I talked to before I left weren't lying about the time I was going to have, they just weren't sports fans.
Yes, I've had great moments here, the greatest of which was my girlfriend's arrival for a visit last week. I've even had fun moments that involved sports, like attending a Manchester United soccer game or being on the University of Edinburgh basketball team. Unfortunately, my girlfriend had to leave, and eleven men kicking a ball combined with bad basketball players with funny accents is not enough to overshadow the fact that when I come home in early May, I will have missed two of the greatest sporting events of any year.
I won't even get into the fact that I had to stay up until 4 am just to watch the Super Bowl, a fate bad enough considering the game was just a bit more exciting than clay. Not clay pots either, just plain old clay, sitting there in a lump. That's how boring the Super Bowl was.
No, much worse than that, I have not seen one second of action in the NCAA basketball tournament. I didn't see Iowa State or North Carolina get upset. I didn't see Gonzaga surprise nobody and advance to the Sweet Sixteen. I've been able to read about the games online, but to a sports addict like myself, that's like offering a two-pack-a-day smoker one stick of Trident. It's not going to kick the craving.
I did think that by not knowing a thing about the state of college basketball this year, it would be beneficial to my picking the bracket. My theory was that I knew too much about basketball most years and overanalysed my picks. My theory was wrong. You know "the earth is flat" theory? That type of wrong.
I am in third to last place in my pool of Tufts friends, and guess who I'm ahead of? Two people who are studying in Spain.
I miss college basketball a lot, but if there is one day I wish I could fly home for, it's Opening Day of the Major League Baseball season. I know there have been a lot of changes to baseball in the 1990's and early 2000's, and not very many of them positive, but it is still our national pastime. Excuse me for being sappy for one second, but there is nothing quite as beautiful as a father ditching work and a son ditching school to go to the ballpark for the afternoon season opener. It seems the sun is always shining on Opening Day, the birds chirp a little louder, the grass is a little greener, and the players' uniforms a little cleaner.
The world is just right on Opening Day. It's the only day of the year that everyone is in first place. In today's game, where very few teams have a chance to win the World Series, Opening Day represents the one time in the season when all fans - even those unlucky enough to hail from Minnesota, Kansas City, Tampa Bay, Boston, or the South Side of Chicago - have a right to be optimistic. And even if that optimism is misguided, as it always is for residents of Boston, whose team hasn't won since 1918, and the South Side of Chicago, where the Cubs have been held World Series-less since 1908, it doesn't matter. It's Opening Day, your best pitcher is taking the mound, your team is in first place, and...okay, okay, I'll stop with the Field of Dreams/Bull Durham/For the Love of the Game monologue (Kevin Costner is very passionate about baseball).
I was serious about all that, but I know that, in actuality, your dad can't ditch his job to go to the game because he'd have to work two jobs to afford two decent tickets to any modern ballpark. It would cost you about $15 to park, and about four bucks each for a hot dog and a cup of beer that hardly towers over a shot glass. And if you want to show some real support for your team, it's about sixty dollars for a jersey, twenty for a hat, and even the giant foam fingers will cost you a few dollars.
So no, things aren't perfect in baseball, but on April 2nd, they might as well be. Unfortunately, I'll be somewhere on Shakespeare's sceptered isle, freezing my arse off, watching the snooker championships and missing the whole glorious thing.
But that's not something anyone clued me in on before I decided to go abroad. I guess the trade-off is that while I can't watch college basketball or Opening Day, I've never had to watch a minute of the XFL.
