Posted: Ted Conroy
A few credits short of graduation? Fail that class you needed for your minor? Don’t want to go home? You remedy that by SU’s summer session. Between Maymester and the rest of the summer months, there’s enough school to fill your palate with different options, all in a less stressful summer environment.
Who usually takes these classes? The Fizz breakdown: Your typical underachievers who either didn’t want to take more than 12 credits or just failed/bombed their way through a crazy bar season (after the heartbreaks on the Hill this year, it’s perfectly understandable).
There’s your overachievers. The three-year plan people who want their doctorate by age 23. The “nerds” – who eventually become our bosses.
But the real rulers of campus between May and August are athletes. Look around and you could see Scoop Jardine, Chandler Jones, and half the lacrosse team.
Varsity Athletics, believe it or not, is a class at SU in the education department. Counts as physical education, and it’s one credit a semester. However, we all know they already spend upwards of 20 hours¬†practicing,¬†along with plenty of study time to make sure Johnny Linebacker stays academically eligible for the Pitt game. For that, the players end up with far less time to take a full courseload.
Fizz, how do we identify the athletes on campus in the summer? Glad you asked. Scholarship athletes are notorious for never wearing anything other than team gear. Blue Shorts, orange shirt, Nike flipflops. That 27 on the guys backpack? It’s not a serial number, buddy – that’s Averin Collier’s call letters.
If you’re up on campus, it’s a cool way to get unfiltered access to those you may idolize on the playing field.
On the flip side, you could call it a make-or-break preseason for some. Take the football team. They can’t actually practice, but have full access to the weight room and training facilities. If one of them does right, they can get ahead on classes, get in great shape before camp, and still have time to hit Armory Square on the weekend.
It ends up being a great way to see how they’ve adjusted to life away from the constant supervision of the program. The Fizz suspects we’ll easily identify which of these athletes embraced the summer months when fall semester rolls around.
