As a graduate student working for a well-established (read: ephemeral) professor, I find myself with lots of unstructured time. Actually, I find myself with lots of time that I should be structuring, but instead spend gazing out the window.
Again, actually, I don’t really gaze out the window because I work two floors underground. Rather, I do sometimes set my desktop background to nice window-like views of concrete buildings and parking lots and turn the reading lamp above my cubicle to the maximum intensity in order to simulate a more outdoorsy setting. (It doesn’t work.)
During the frequent multi-day or even weekend-long trysts into abject mindlessness, my mind is often occupied by ultimate. Consequently, I’ve become somewhat of an expert on how to waste my time doing ultimate-related activities. Here is a short list of recommended ways to productively spend your time when you want to make yourself feel ok about wasting your
Learn how to spin a disc on your fingers
Pros: You’re look like a bad-ass the next time you’re walking around campus with a disc. All the ladies will say “oooh” and all the men will feel their genitals shrivel and get sucked back into their pelvic cavities with a gentle “pop”.
Cons: If you’re like me, you’ll never figure out how to do it and only improve your ability to make this face while staring at the disc that keeps falling off your finger
Read ultimate blog posts
Pros: First of all, you’re already good at it judging by your present activities. Furthermore, you might actually learn something about ultimate.
Cons: You might accidentally read a post by Crazy Frank and need to unlearn a few things. You might also become embroiled in the social scene of ultimate, which is even worse. God knows, you could even at some point stumble into RSD, which is just not any good. In hindsight, I should erase this entry.
Write a blog post
Pros: You’ll feel productive and organize your thoughts concerning ultimate.
Cons: Just kidding, you won’t. If anything, you’ll feel like even more of a loser because, let’s face it, what other kind of people actually write blog posts? Ask Google Images “who writes blogs” and you get this person.
I really doubt she’s any good at ultimate… or life.
Make a Workout Schedule:
Pros: You can point at something and say, “Look what I’ve done!”. The best part of this is that you can spend a long time making a schedule. Then, when you don’t follow the schedule, which will happen on average within the hour you complete it, you can immediately go back and spend more time revising the schedule. Definitely one of the best workouts recommended in this post.
Cons: Pro tip – you should say “Look what I’ve done!” quietly and to yourself because nobody actually cares. Not even Choon.
Practice Ultimate or Do an Actual Workout
I’m not even going to “pro” and “con” this one, because it’s so unlikely to actually occur.
Hope that helps. Remember, the only way to get better at ultimate is to think about it constantly, but not actually do anything about it.
