Books and cleats

By David Canal V. (undergradute FIGRI student)
 

During my time at the university I´ve had a great time learning, studying and meeting new friends and teachers. But certainly until now, I wouldn´t associate my college memories with sports.

For me sports are very important, not only as a source of fun, but also as an activity that complements your student life. Maybe it could be because I come from a school that encourages you to practice at least one discipline. We had the opportunity to choose from a wide spectrum of possibilities: athletics, soccer, basketball, volleyball, swimming… you name it, my school had it. Hence I developed a link between my academic life and my sporting life. Having them connected is excellent, because you can offload some of the stress you get from the assignments, stay fit, develop self-discipline and avoid health issues.

As the semesters passed by, I noticed that it doesn´t matter if the student comes from such a sports-oriented school as mine, because sport is necessary in one´s life. The problem is that our institution, The Externado, doesn´t offer students the chance to build up a symbiosis between books and courts or fields. The geographic location of the campus makes it difficult, so the only option that we have is to go and play some table tennis in the student lounge. Nevertheless, we have a sports facility located at Bogota´s savannah; the thing is that it is very far from the campus.

But enough of beating up the university, because the lack of opportunity to do physical activity isn’t the only thing to mention. In these 3 years I’ve also noted that we have some of the best teachers in South America, that we are part of one of the toughest faculties in the country and that we go to university to make friends and study like crazy! Therefore, I started to realize that all the guys that were soccer players and wanted to be part of the official team and went to training, started to fail assignments and some of them even dropped out.

At that point I knew it was going to be difficult to keep up with the degree if I wanted to be competitive in soccer. That’s why I chose books over cleats. But the effort is temporary (3 years). Now I’m at a stage at which I have more time. For example, I don´t have class on Saturdays anymore. I hope that all my classmates that like sports and that have overcome the hard schedules with me, can now enjoy their free time playing their favorite sport!