Week 3:What Has Hong Bing Been Up To?
Disclaimer:
I apologize for not posting at all during the school year. With the start of the semester, I started to push off my writing and as a result developed a mindset where “I will do it next week.” As a result, my posts did not get out. The timing is perfect now since it is the 3rd week of summer for me. So, with that I will try to be more consistent in posting. However, I cannot promise that I will keep it up. My plan is to still continue to use the site though.
Introduction:
With that being said, this week was a very busy week. I first started off the week by heading to Midland with my mom and spending the day checking out the area and the parks they had to offer. I then traveled to Mount Pleasant and stayed at my/Carson’s apartment and sent the next two nights there. The bulk of my week was spent at the Council of Student Athletes (COSA) MAC meeting in Cleveland. Through this event I was able to learn some of the issues and problems that us athletes faced. To end my week, I spent some time with friends and started my new job at Hansons. Keep on reading to learn more about this eventful week!
Midland and Mount Pleazzy
My Mom and I started off the week heading to Midland to check out the town. We drive through Midland Michigan every time I head to Central Michigan, but we have never stopped by. Like Mount Pleasant it a large town in the middle of what I like to call “Corn.” This means that this town is in the middle of nowhere. You may wonder why a town of nearly 45,000 people is in the middle of nowhere exists. Well, it exists because Dow chemical, a fortune 500 company, operates in the city. Even though it is mainly known for its Dow it has a multitude of beautiful parks. My mom and I were able to explore many different parks and they offered many things such as plenty of green space, a large river, many bridges, a skatepark, and a variety of courts to play teams sports. After exploring my mom and I had pizza from a local place. We got a BLT pizza, and it was very good. I was surprised that they used Mayo as the sauce instead of normal pizza sauce, but it was still amazing. After lunch we headed to Mount Pleasant.
We arrived in Mount Pleasant at around 3pm and my mom left shortly after. I was staying at my apartment for the upcoming year and a couple of people were there. Carson, my teammate, Abby, his girlfriend, and Jesse, another teammate, were all staying over the summer in the apartment. It was fun being able to catch up with them since the last time I saw them was at the end of school. I was spending two nights in Mount Pleasant and while most of them went to work, I was able to get a couple things done like catch up with people that I had not got the chance to. I was able to visit one of my professors that I went to study abroad with and talk about how the school year went. Additionally, I saw my coach as well and talked to her about the upcoming cross-country season. Finally, I texted on of my friends in China that is coming back this summer for college. To end the final day of being in Mount Pleasant, all of us went to Doozies, the local ice cream shop, and got artic swirls for my birthday. Overall, it was great to catch up with people that I had not seen in a while.
Council Of Student Athletes (COSA) MAC Meeting
On Wednesday morning, a small group of us headed to Cleveland to attend a MAC conference. In this group was our athletic director, associate athletic director, faculty athletic rep, a softball student athlete, and I. At this conference, the softball student athlete and I were representing CMU as the “student council” of the MAC. There were 2 reps from each of the 12 MAC schools. It was really cool meeting all these like-minded people and seeing how athletics was run at their schools. I was super lucky to have an amazing roommate from Akron who played football and run track as well.
The conference consisted of 3 days of meetings and most of the meetings I attended were discussions of the creation of rules that COSA rep (the 2 student athlete reps from each school) want to implement from each school. We discussed what we wanted our DEI and mental health weeks to be centered around, how to increase athlete involvement, and the big issue of how does the NCAA and universities tackle and handle the issues of athlete’s revenue sharing in the next coming months. In addition to the meetings, we also had a award banquet to give awards to exception student athletes and schools. It was a great event that had amazing food and I was able to talk to many new people.
Selfie that Kent State Football play took of all of us COSA reps.
The most valuable part of this trip was connecting with other student athletes from different schools. I love meeting new people and learning about them. You can learn a lot from learning about people’s experiences, especially since many of the student athletes were older than I was. Additionally, we were able to connect and before friends by doing may fun activities such as bowling, eating together, sharing laughs, and doing deep talks. I am so thankful for the opportunity that I was provided.
The Weekend:
I got home from the conference on Saturday morning and spent the majority of the day catching up on sleep since I was very sleep deprived from the conference. At night I was able to hang out with some middle school friends. I played Danny in Sting Pong which is a normal game of ping pong but the person who wins the point get the opportunity to hit the ping pong as hard as they can to try to hit the ping pong on the persons bare back. I usually get destroyed against Danny since I normally do not win many points or am accurate at hitting his back, but I was able to be super accurate and play a lot better. Then afterwards we played some Mario Cart and some board games.
The following day I started my first shirt at Hansons running shop. It was not a very busy day which was really nice, and I was able to learn how to correctly fit people with shoes along with figuring out what shoes they may or may not like. Overall, it was really good, and I am happy I am working there!
Conclusion:
This Week was a very good week! One of the biggest things that I have taken away from this week is the importance of connections. I am so happy that was able to meet so many new people this week. Through meeting them and maintaining current connections I was able to learn so much in a short amount of time. With that being said, it is hard to sometimes go out there and put yourself out there. However, I strongly suggest it since it is a really helpful skill to be able to talk and have fun with people.
Get in Touch
Got questions or want to chat? Drop a line. I love connecting with new friends!