Week 4 College :Finding Comfort in the Chaos: A Week of Accepting It’s Okay to Feel Low
“Instead of resisting any emotion, the best way to dispel it is to enter it fully, embrace it and see through your resistance”
–Deepak Chopra
By: Hong Bing Tang September 22, 2024
09/16/2024 to 09/22/2024
Introduction:
Hello everyone. This week has one exciting but stressful week as well. Now that we are in the thick of the semester and training, things have gotten tough and managing my time has gotten tougher and tougher. Although things have been a little rough, this week was one of the most eventful ones I have had. Through these experiences, I have learned many things that I am looking forward to in the future.
MAC summit:
This year I recently join this Student Athlete organization called COSA. Each MAC school gets to send 2 representatives to COSA so Paige and I are CMU’s reps. In COSA we discuss the current issues and legislation changes going on in the NCAA and MAC. Through this extracurricular I am able to travel to Cleveland once a year with all the other COSA reps from the other schools to attend a Summit where the MAC bring in speakers to discuss key issues that student athletes and athletics face. This year the confrence was focused on three different areas, Sustainability, DEI, and mental health. We traveled to the Cleveland on Sunday night and stayed the night there. One of the things they do is they give us a student athlete from a different school as a roommates and I was rooming with Bryce who is an cross country runner from Bowling Green. I already knew him from the COSA trip in May so we got to catch up. We had an early morning so I went to bed shortly I got to the hotel. In the morning we went through out sessions and while the DEI and sustainability talks were informative, I took the most out of the mental health talk. The speaker was a psychologist for the Memphis Grizzly professional basketball team. She was very well spoken and her message was based on removing the judgement of our emotions and associate them with good or bad. She emphasized being able to experience the full spectrum of emotions and that we shouldn’t strive for a “happy” life but instead a fulfilled life full of emotions. Another big message she emphasized was that it is “okay to not be okay” meaning that it is fine to feel down, sad, angry, grief and all these emotions. The message was very simple however it practice was hard to put in place. This message was really helpful last week due to the busy week and it was helping in understanding how my emotions really shape who I am.
Wednesday Hangout:
Even with a very packed week, I was still of course able to squeeze in the fun things in the week. It started on Wednesday, I got to hang out with Jessie, and we went to a local park and Hammocked. It was perfect weather outside. We talked the whole time about places we would like to go, favorite animals, random facts about squirrels and muscles, her work, running, and many other things. It was a wonderful time, and the funniest part was we were attacked by a rogue squirrel that kept on dropping acorns on us. Overall, it was fun!
Western Michigan Cross Country meet:
On Friday we had a cross country meet in Western Michigan. It was our first 8k of the season, so it was a big race. Unfortunately, we had to get up super early since we had to be on the bus at 5:45am since the meet started at 10:00am. The bus ride to the meet was quite quiet but once we got to the meet and set up the tent, we started to get more cheerful. The weather was good, no clouds in the sky and 75 degrees. A little bit hot but not too bad. When the race started, I felt pretty comfortable. The race went out a little slower than I normally do. Once I got halfway through the race, things started to get really tough. I was constantly fighting between speeding up and slowing down. Although when I cross the line I PRed by 30 seconds. I am really happy with how the race went since although I did not feel mentally strong during the race, starting off this faster is a huge confidence booster and I am excited to keep on working get better and see how much further I can push my body.
Football Game Vs Ball State:
On Saturday we had a football game for the first MAC match up of the year. I sat with teammates, however somehow, we always sit very close to my other friends as well. It was pretty hot on Saturday and especially after the race and long run my body was feeling it. I still had a lot of fun at the game. I was able to talk to so many people that I hadn’t seen in a while. Additionally, the football game was pretty close throughout the game. There was absolutely no defense on either side which allowed Ball state to have huge plays. Due to the weather the student section rapidly declined fast and by the 3rd quarter it was quite small. Carson, Sawyer, Henry and I decided to leave after halfway through the 3rd quarter due to the game being slow and hot. Even after we left the game stayed close and luckily, we won.
Conclusion:
This past week has been an exciting week full of busyness and thrills. Even though it has been a rollercoaster of emotions, with the MAC summit earlier in the week, I feel better in touch with understanding my feelings and how they relate to events and the things that happen to me. Till next week!
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