I have always been a fan of swimming, particularly if it’s 95 degrees and I’ve been schleping across campus all morning. It should come as no surprise, then, that I decided to take advantage of the lovely pool facility here at Miami University.
I swim in the mornings, mostly because if I try to go any later, it won’t get done. In my mind, it’s perfectly reasonable to wake up at 7 a.m. and head to the pool. To the readers shaking their heads and saying “there’s no way anybody else is at the pool that early,” I laugh. Here’s something they don’t tell you about the pool: there’s always someone there. I am not the first person at the pool in the mornings. When I arrive, the pool is usually half full with professors.
The downside to this arrangement is that one of these days I’m going to walk into a class and have to face the professor in lane two. The upside to the arrangement is that I’m in great shape (I have to swim fast; I mean, if I’m getting beat by a 65-year-old professor of geology then that’s just embarrassing).
As I have come to learn, Miami provides a plethora of pamphlets for every conceivable sport, service and class. Most of the time, it’s all the information you need and a bunch of facts you would never ask for. However, there are times where several critical pieces of information don’t make it into any brochures, websites, or convocations.
Here are some other things Miami forgot to tell you about the pool:
Sometimes when you go on a Saturday, you’ll walk in and confront 30 to 40 children who are there for synchronized swimming lessons.
Said synchronized swimming practice requires that there be music playing. (In retrospect this seems a little obvious, but how often are people really thinking about what goes on during a synchronized swimming practice?)
The pool has underwater speakers.
The songs playing will exclusively be pop songs from the 2000s.
Occasionally, “Party in the U.S.A” will be replaced with a disembodied voice inexplicably counting in groups of seven.
The voice may or may not haunt your nightmares, causing you to wake up in a cold sweat and check that you and your roommate haven’t been kidnapped or otherwise vanished into the twilight zone.
If you experience or have experienced nightmare-like symptoms, know that you aren’t alone. If symptoms persist, talk to your doctor about melatonin, or to your parents about therapy.
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