We are about to be in the last third of this school year, and I feel as if I have let this year slip through my fingers.

I have spent most of my time longing for last year, reminiscing, and wondering why this year is so depressing.

My sister, along with a few of my closest friends, isn’t here at Tech anymore, and I think that has a lot to do with it.

Last year, we had a great season in basketball.  I got to play more than I expected, and my friends and family were at every home game. Everyone was having fun; my grades were good; it was the utopian college atmosphere I had always heard and dreamt about.

This year, it is one big struggle.

I don’t understand it. It seems as though everyone is trying to stay young, but none of us can help but grow up.

I go to bed on time, I plan my future, and I have little interest in “beer pong” or related factions of the popular drinking game.

It wasn’t a decision anyone made; things just happen.

But, the difference between this slow year and previous years like this is that I feel that this really is shaping me into what I am going to be.

I’ll let the movie “Little Miss Sunshine” expand on my theory … that I stole from “Little Miss Sunshine.”

 

Dwayne: “I wish I could just sleep until I was eighteen and skip all this crap-high school and everything-just skip it.”

Frank: “You know Marcel Proust?”

Dwayne: “He's the guy you teach.”

Frank: “Yeah. French writer. Total loser. Never had a real job. Unrequited love affairs. Gay. Spent 20 years writing a book almost no one reads. But he's also probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare. Anyway, he uh … he gets down to the end of his life, and he looks back and decides that all those years he suffered, those were the best years of his life, ’cause they made him who he was. All those years he was happy? You know, total waste. Didn't learn a thing. So, if you sleep until you're 18 … Ah, think of the suffering you're gonna miss. I mean high school? High school-those are your prime suffering years. You don't get better suffering than that.”

 

This might be one of my prime suffering years.

It might be for sports at Tech as well.

I wouldn’t want to skip this year, and, though it’s been tough on Tech athletics, it has not been a wasted year.

People might take this the wrong way, but character is either being built or destroyed during these times.

Sometimes these things need to happen so it can set off a chain of events that almost exaggerates change.

Change needs to happen, but we all can get something out of this.

Let it build us up instead of bring us down.

When things are going well, of course everyone is happy and getting along.

Now that things aren’t so hot, people’s true character really comes alive.

This season has weeded out the people coming to the games to get attention for themselves and to be on TV from the people who come for their love for Tech.

My teammates are still the same great guys that they were last year when we won 20 games.

My family still comes to every game, of course. 

It may not be as fun as last year, but they want to be a part of the good, the bad, and the ugly. That’s what makes us who we really are.

 

JJ Marshall is a junior journalism major and serves as the sports editor for The Tech Talk. Email comments to jjm023@latech.edu.