Go Ahead, Judge that S***

I hesitate to write this post because while it’s not necessarily controversial, it is judgey. I like that word, judgey. Being a high school student, I sometimes feel like my whole life revolves around judging. I am judged, you are judged, I judge, and you judge; pretending to not in my opinion is just a lie. Judging is an inevitable part of growing up (and let’s be honest, life in general)--and while judging is usually construed in a bad way, like in an,  “Oh, is she judging me?” way, I would like to think that generally it’s is more about finding your way in the world.

Let me explain. Everyone around you has a different way of being; different style; different interests; different goals..the list goes on. And throughout your whole life (although maybe especially in high school), you are trying to find and change and reevaluate your own way of being in the world. So to judge someone, to me, really means more to see someone and their way of being, and compare it to your own. You decide if you like the things that the people around you do, or wear, or [insert verb here] or perhaps dislike those things--and so judging is really a subconscious way for everyone to constantly reevaluate their way of being.

Judging is often misconstrued with hating, but for example, I judge when I walk down the hallway and see a skirt that someone is wearing that I like. And by that same token, I judge when I see someones shirt and dislike it. To be an effective “judger” in this world, it’s important to realize that your judgements may be wrong, and should change with time, and on that note, I’m going to do some judging myself--I’m going to be judgey.

Shoes. Shoes may or may not say a lot about the wearer. I’m inclined to go with the may not half, they don’t really say anything about the wearer--yet in our society, each shoe carries around a lot of judgement baggage. The baggage is not bad or good, it just is. Shoes place their wearers into stereotypes. And so when passing a stranger on the street--one way i “judge” them is by their shoes (with the full awareness that my judgement is probably wrong). The other day a friend and I were walking to Kenney. We had just come out of Seibol when we saw a guy--he appeared the typical, run-of-the-mill U of I student, jeans, a t-shirt, maybe a hoodie but I can’t remember, decently attractive by conventional standards, nothing out of the ordinary. But then in my quick passing-by scan, I got to his feet; he was sporting bright red chocos. For those of you who don’t know what Chocos are, they’re kind of like a ultra-outdoorsy sandal, good for any kind of outdoor activity that doesn’t require sneakers. But they're also simple, and in my opinion, look both athletic and “cute”.

The typical college student at the U of I however, doesn’t wear chocos. So I saw the guys shoes, and judged. Automatically I gave him more thought than I would a regular passerby--I liked the shoes--and frankly it made me more interested in him. He seemed like more of an alternative type, not the typical student. So blah, blah, blah, he walked past--and normally I wouldn’t have given that very brief passing encounter a second thought. But after my friend and I had passed, she turned to me and said, “Did you see his shoes?” And then something like, “he seemed kind of cool.” I started laughing because her judgement of him based on his shoes was exactly the same as mine. We thought that the guys shoes were a positive thing, but to someone else--they could be equally as negative. So I don’t really have a point here, but my Grandmother’s mother used to say, “that’s what makes horse races” meaning that if everyone judged the same way, then everyone would bet on the same horse. And, what fun would there be in that?

Surreal Beginnings

 We are creatures of our environment. Or at least I am. What I mean by that is that I am always thinking the most about wherever I am in life, in the school year, in my relationships--and it’s hard for me to remove myself from my immediate world. So, I’m not going to pretend that this blog will be a forum for whimsical or wordly writing. Instead I can do nothing else but focus on the random details of my life, however mundane or irrelevant and do my best to show you how I view them.

            As I sit here contemplating what my life is comprised of at this moment, several things come to mind, and none are particularly uplifting, though necessary rites of passage for most high school students. You know, the scintillating daily grind of school, homework (the occasional extra-curricular), sleep, and sports. The latter is what most interests me here--more specifically swimming, my sport of “choice.” Don’t get me wrong, I do swim on my own volition, but sometimes I think that at the beginning of the season something insidious inside of me peeps its head and whispers in my ear that swimming is somehow a good idea. Not that I hate the actual act of swimming; in fact, the second I jump in the pool and start the (at first) smooth strokes of my warm up I know that swimming is good for me, and that it’s all worth it. But, without a doubt the hardest part of the season is the thirty some minutes between my wake-up alarm at five a.m. and the collective mad jump into the pool at five thirty.

            Let me lay it out for you. In most of my life I feel pretty confident that I live in a realist world. Things align themselves according to conventional knowledge and I don’t second-guess what I see or hear. But in those thirty minutes before practice, different rules apply and my world seems surreal and confusing. I have some attachment to the idea of self reliance--not expecting my parents to do everything for me (even though I suspect it ends up that way anyways)--and for the last couple of years that has manifested in my perhaps misguided efforts to bike to practice every morning (at 5:10 a.m.), this experience being what is most surreal in my morning routine. Backing up ten minutes to give the full scoop; my morning begins at five a.m. when the first alarm on my phone rings--I can never seem to remember the sound once I am fully awake but during those moments in between sleep and semi-wakefulness, the less than five note tone seems to engulf my world and drown out any other thought. And it repeats five minutes later because I feel that I need that period between alarms where I have vague awareness of having to get up yet still feel no obligation to move. It’s weird how five minutes at the end of a class can seem like an eternity yet these five minutes seem like a snap of my fingers.

            Once I actually manage to rouse myself--an automatic thing for me now--once that 5:05 alarm rings, I instantaneously swing myself out of bed (because I know that any waiting and I will fall back asleep and miss practice, “god forbid!”), I follow a set of actions like clockwork. The house is silent as I throw on my suit and shorts, gather up my backpack, pick up my lunch from the fridge, and glide outside into my garage. Actually it’s more of a slow clomp, but I like to pretend otherwise. It’s hard to convey how this part of my morning is surreal, but I think what it comes down to is that I feel as though I am the only person alive. When I turn on my garage light I imagine myself as surrounded by a little bubble of warmth in a sea of darkness--and when I depart on my bike, I feel like I’m doing something exciting, risky, uncharted. Out of the corner of my eye I constantly see things that aren’t there--nothing ever discernable but shapes in the dark that look like looming figures. I’m never scared, but rather I feel that these things are a natural part of my six-minute journey to the pool. If I do happen to run into a stray person--usually passing on the opposite sidewalk or in a meandering car--I always wonder if I appear as bizarre to them as they do to me. Once I reach the pool the surreal feeling starts to recede. I always try to be the first one there so I can lay in the locker room in silence and try to sink back into the black hole of my consciousness. And then I make my way down to the pool through a dimly lit hallway, hoping that the door is open (some mornings all the doors seem to be locked for no explicable reason), sit on the deck, and jump in.