Week 2: Enjoying the Moment!
Start of the New Semester!
Hi all! For those that are reading this, I hope you had a great week like I have. I wanted to start with this weekly update with something one of my professors said this week. During one of my first engineering classes, my professor assigned us to do around 100 math problems to do as homework. Luckly a lot of these problems were basic elementary and calculator problems such as adding fractions. When giving these problems he said something like this to us “while these problems may seem tedious, it is important to understand that everything that you’ve learned in past classes have a purpose and instead of hating it you should enjoy it and have fun.” He said something that was slightly different like this, but it’s been a week since he said it but it’s been so powerful.
This statement has been really impactful throughout this week in all aspects of my life. To start, school. I feel like many people really do not enjoy the process of school and rightfully so. School is stressful, and often times professors are bad, homework is grueling, and its tough balancing things. While I sometimes have embraced this mindset, I am doing better in approaching school with a different mindset. This semester is the start of the majority of my engineering classes, and I know it’s only going to get harder. Although it is going to get hard, I am really excited to get deeper in the course load I have. While things will get tough, I think it is important to understand the broader context I am in. I am going to school at a university, an opportunity that seems obvious for many people around me, but this is an opportunity that many people don’t get and honestly, I am very privileged to have this opportunity. While this may seem small, this has huge significance since it allows me to be grateful and enjoy what I am doing even though it may be tough. Through this mindset I have changed from dreading and not wanting to do school and homework to being excited to do homework and go to class. I’ve noticed this trend has started ever since college and I hope to have in continue.
Second, running. For those that do not know, I have been battling injuries throughout my whole collegiate career. I have yet to have one healthy full season. While this has really been tough mentally, I have learned a lot. With the start of the new year, I decided I wanted to change my training a little bit more and added a lot more cross training (biking, swimming, elliptical) on top of my running. This week I hit around 50 miles along with 210 minutes of cross training, and 60 minutes of strength. On top of this we also lift and do other strength exercises. While this requires me to be in our facility a lot. Often times by myself, I really enjoy the process and that is really important. I think this is really the right step in the correct direction because it does not matter what my future holds for me. I am really excited to keep on working because I know it will all pay off in the end.
Last to end the week since this has really been the highlight of my week. Running in the snow!!! Over this last week we have gotten a lot of snow. This has allowed me to run in the snow which is one of my favorite things to do. For example, today’s run was 12 degrees with around the wind causing the real feel to be around -3 degrees. While many people did not run outside. Rightfully so. I feel like it gives me an opportunity to experience something different that is not a everyday thing. And running on the treadmill really sucks. So, I decided to run outside today and most of this week and honestly it has been some of the most fun runs I have done in the last couple of months.
With that I leave you with this, enjoy the things that are happening now even though they might be tough or even brutal cause they may turn out to be fun or will help in the future.
Fun thing that I have done this week for my goal: Sledding with my friends.