JOE WEBB AND CO. – THE WRITTEN WORLD

LESSON #34: VISIT THE GYMNASIUM

          Back when I was an undergraduate, I had this professor who used to say that it was impossible to be the world’s greatest Chaucer scholar and to also have the world’s greatest abdominal six-pack.  By this, he meant that it was necessary to prioritize your goals in life – and to make a choice between producing elite-level scholarship and being on the cover ofMen’s Health.  But, to this maxim, which I guess might be true, I’d like to add an important caveat: it is also impossible to be the world’s greatest Chaucer scholar and to weigh in at 350 pounds – at least for very long.  Why?  Well, because heart disease is a motherfucker, that’s why – and it tends to attack people with excess body fat around their mid-section.  So good luck living much past 45 if your lifestyle is completely sedentary and you pack away a dozen Krispy Kremes every morning. 

         The truth is, folks, that exercise is important, and because technology has so radically transformed most people’s daily jobs, we don’t naturally get enough of it anymore.  You see, back in 1808, I’m pretty sure that the daily regimen of milking the cows, rustling up the hay, fixing the wheel on the wagon, fording rivers, and going out to shoot Buffalo (I’m basing this scenario entirely on knowledge learned from playing Oregon Trail) kept most people in pretty decent shape.  But now, 200 years later, we get our milk from the grocery store, and there aren’t very many Buffalo left to shoot.  This being the case, society has invented the gymnasium – a place where we can simulate the milking of cows by using the triceps pull-down machine to work out our arms. 

          Now, I realize that for many of you, this lesson might be unnecessary.  Study after study has shown that student recreation centers receive way more daily traffic than university libraries (and to those of you who error in this direction, allow me to point you towards Lesson #66: Using the Library), but there’s also a large portion of the college population that, for one reason or another, hates lifting weights.  Luckily for you, billions of dollars have been pumped nationally into this aspect of university life in the last few decades, and today’s Gymnasium offers a whole lot more than the bench, the curl bar, and the sit-up pad that are the necessary accoutrements for the fraternity lifting experience.  So if lifting isn’t your thing, you can still visit the gymnasium for thirty minutes of daily squash, swimming, walking, yoga, or kickboxing – all of which will provide enough exercise to keep you healthy and lean. The secret to knocking out this important daily task, particularly if you are an extremely busy student, is to learn to make it a habit, and to learn to multitask.

          Most of us, when it comes right down to it, are creatures of habit – and we follow the laws of inertia.  For example, I don’t particularly like or dislike brushing my teeth every day; it’s just something that I do because I like being able to chew my food and I don’t want my teeth to turn green.  I know that brushing my teeth, like visiting the gymnasium, is good for me, and because I’ve gotten into the habit of cleaning my teeth daily, it feels weird and gross to neglect this ritual.  If you make exercise a habit, the same mental perceptions that accompany hygiene will shortly follow you to the gym.  You’ll just feel a little off on days when you don’t make it there.  Similarly, I look at brushing my teeth as an opportunity to multitask – it’s during these three minutes a day that I do most of the cleaning of my apartment.  It’s also during the thirty minutes a day that I spend running around St. Louis that I do most of my mental writing of these Dr. Wizard lessons – and this is the second key to knocking out your daily responsibility of exercise.  If your life is so busy that you can’t always make it to the gymnasium, then you’ve got to make the gymnasium come to you.  And, for the perfect example of this phenomenon, we now turn to…

          Lincoln Hawk, the character portrayed by Sylvester Stallone in the movie Over the Top.  Now, as far as I know,Over the Top is the greatest arm-wrestling movie that has ever been produced.  Luckily for us, it’s also got a lot of relevance to this lesson.  You see, just like you, Lincoln Hawk is a very busy man – he’s trying to cram 36 hours of life into each 24 hour day.  But he also realizes the importance of exercise in the job market.  Now, traditionally, a healthy lifestyle (at least in most of your cases), becomes beneficial in the workplace in the sense that healthy, trim employees tend to be promoted faster, earn more money, and miss less time with illness.  The relationship of exercise to monetary gain is even more direct, however, for Lincoln Hawk – who must continue driving a semi-truck to feed his family, but who must also win an arm-wrestling competition in order to win a new semi-truck so that he might free himself from the evil machinations of his scheming father-in-law.  As such, Lincoln rigs up a triceps pull-down machine in his truck, so that he can work out his breadwinning right arm as he drives with his left – the ultimate killing of two birds with one stone.  So, to make a long story short, what I’m saying is this: bring your required reading with you to the gymnasium, and knock out that Chaucer while you’re on the elliptical machine. 

          Finally, I want to close with this: it’s not about “the freshman 15” and it’s not about genetics.  If you graduate college weighing 15 pounds more than you did when you graduated high school, that’s a good thing.  Most guys grow a couple of inches past the age of eighteen, and their shoulders and back start weirdly stretching horizontally as they come into their manhood; most girls look better once they’ve filled out a little bit from their stick-like, hyper-metabolic high school state.  Your weight isn’t nearly so important as your health.  Likewise, the fact that your parents are marginally obese does not necessarily guarantee that you will be too – it probably just means that they have either made poor food decisions or they have given up on exercise.  Genetics and nature only determine a small portion of what we are capable of being. I mean, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Connor Oberst can’t sing for shit, and they’re out there selling millions of records.  So, just devote half an hour a day to exercise (roughly one-fiftieth of your time on the planet), and I promise you that you will be all the better for it.  Oh yeah, and I almost forgot: you’ll also be more attractive – which does tend to help when mating.

          Welcome back, folks, to the gradual July relaunch of the site that began as Dr. Wizard’s Advice for College Students.  Last fall, during my final year of teaching at Saint Louis University, I began this website as a repository for a series of short college advice articles for my students.  Along the way, the site attracted the attention of several newspapers, and with that momentum, the Dr. Wizard project eventually grew to the point that we took on three additional writers and began to serially string in College Magazine.  It was an exciting year, one that began with the launch of this website, that in the middle saw the completion of my Ph.D. coursework and exams, and that culminated with my appearance on Jeopardy! (which, by the way, will air on Monday, July 6th).   

          Now, however, as often happens in life, circumstances have changed, and I find myself moving forward.  At the end of this month, I’ll be packing up a few suitcases and my dog Harvey Wallbanger, and I’ll be moving to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a television comedy writer.  It’s an exciting time, one that will see me continue to write several thousand words a day – but one that also will have a significant impact on this website.  

          So, here’s what you can expect as the site transitions further away from being a space dedicated solely to the wonderful world of college.  We’ll still offer access to wisdom on the college experience (because, I think, the advice is still good, and still funny), and there will still be links to articles written by Dr. Wizard Creative Group members Matt Schultz, Chris Schaeffer, and Myles Womack, but I’ll also begin to gradually include more articles on pop-culture phenomena, more updates on my experience with Jeopardy and my move to Los Angeles, more access to my burgeoning television writing portfolio, and more attempts to work out material for my anticipated foray into amateur stand-up comedy.  The layout of the website will also be slightly modified, with more new information being available via pages on the side-bars, and the front page cut down to include only a rotating featured Dr. Wizard’s Advice Post of the Week.  

          That being said, hold onto your hats, or perhaps even better, since this month will mark a period of construction and transition, start wearing a hard-hat when you walk around the Dr. Wizard job-site, and be sure to check back often!  Provided I don’t starve, and provided I don’t start immediately hanging out with Pete Doherty, there should be plenty of interesting updates.