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1. Your ridiculously good looking figure will disappear.
It wasn’t easy sculpting your body into that damn fine specimen. Thousands of sprints and years of weights later and you have yourself at six percent body fat with washboard abs. Bad news is, this is the first thing to go in the postgrad life. You couldn’t possibly think that this was going to last. Every single time an alumnus came to visit, the warning signs were plain as day: there months’ worth of happy hours and weekend binges later and you’re already wondering where those side pouches came from. It’s okay, you could save your midriff and get back up on the workout pony if you wanted. But you don’t have access to the amazing university rec center anymore. Finding a gym is stressful and expensive and you’re sure as hell not joining Crossfit, so just hit the bar instead.
2. And that natural talent that carried you for the last decade?
This is easily the biggest disappointment of the postgrad life. You used to be an athletic machine. You were in ridiculous shape and were a card-carrying member of Team Natural Talent–you could run circles around people. Now, you think you can get out and race a 10k on no training because, “psshh, I was a division one athlete.” Only you completely obliterated what cartilage was left in your knees and your heart rate hasn’t gone above resting in weeks. Any aspiration of dominating that douchy Crossfit guy from marketing is exchanged with hacking up cigar fumes from the night before. What happened to you? You used to rock practice still drunk from the night before. Now you’re desperately crawling around looking for your friend with the inhaler. You don’t know your time and frankly couldn’t give a shit.
3. What perks?
Let’s face it. We had pretty sweet lives for four or five years. We had tutors to “help” with homework. We got free books, free printers, preferential doctor appointments–basically first dibs on practically everything. It was almost too good to be true. But in the real world there are no away games to postpone assignments, and no one cares that you rocked it on the court the previous night. Your supervisor isn’t your professor and doesn’t give a shit if you were All-Conference (second team, but who has to know?). You’re truly on your own now.
4. Cube life is terrible and apparently not a place for loud and obnoxious behavior.
You live in a high testosterone world if you’re a college athlete. You spent at least 20 hours a week with a team of dudes constantly ragging on each other and regaling tales of their latest conquests with members of the synchronized swim team. Any confrontations were solved the exact opposite way of what HR would call “acceptable conflict resolution.” Not to mention, you get weird looks when you beat people to the water fountain, door, or fridge and give a crotch chop yelling, “First place bitch!” Everything is still a competition, right? Take the tiger from that life and confine him to a 6-by-6 box and you have what what we call “office docility syndrome.” Scholars and therapists believe this is the leading cause for your outrageously high Tuesday night bar tabs and offensive trivia night behavior. Coming in second is Regina from two cubes down who chomps on her gum like a fucking four-year-old and smells like a nursing home. You’re too competitive for this office environment, band you’re stuck in this 8 to 5 job more than Cowboy fans are with Jerry Jones.
5. You wear your team gear because that’s the only semblance of belonging to anything special.
You have so much school gear by the end of your senior year that there is a section in your closet dedicated to just athletic apparel. You swore off wearing it once you graduated since you were so over that stage in your life. Now it’s back out because it’s a reminder of a better time. Plus, Jack at work is a huge state fan and gives you props whenever he sees you in a sweet dry-fit. It’s a shameful ego booster, but hey, you’ll take anything you can get at this point.
6. You can no longer eat like a hippo.
Remember that weight issue we were talking about earlier? Yeah, there’s a damn good reason for that, and it’s called your metabolism. I remember my first three months after I was done working out and I didn’t touch a weight or pick up a pair of running shoes. That would be cool if I was still burning a couple thousand calories a day from physical activity. Suddenly your metabolism bottoms out and your gut is acting like it’s taking an intro Pillsbury Doughboy course–which it’s acing, by the way. Mirror flexing has been replaced with a depressed glance and subsequent chin-to-chest. Wow, you’ve really let yourself go.
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CoachTaylor
Coach Taylor used to rock it in the collegiate athletic world, but is now relegated to the office where apparently cheering loudly over solitaire victories and reaching double digits on flappy bird (RIP) is frowned upon.
This is basically a diary of my post grad life.