Yesterday morning I woke up to 35 centimeters of snow. The excitement was unbearable, I immediately went to scrounge up whatever ski gear I could find in the basement (I was visiting home and, without anticipating snow, left all of my ski gear in Waterloo) and was planning on getting to our local ski club as soon as I could to indulge in all of the snow we'd gotten. I was then faced with a decision. With upcoming exams and all, I really should have been spending the day studying, with upcoming ski season though, I really should have been spending the day skiing...
The conclusion I drew was that being a university skier in December is hard! For any student, December is a month full of final projects and exams, not a lot of sleep and stressing about whether the work you have or haven't done will be good enough for whatever your standards are. Generally speaking, not a fun time- at least in my experience. Being a skier though, December is a very exciting time of year- after 8 months or so of dry-land, the snow finally comes and you get to try out all of those fancy new tricks (or was it technique?) you've learnt over the fall. But not only is it an exciting time of year, it is also a time crucial in your training plan. If dry-land, you're trying to get in as much volume as possible, and if on snow, as much time on snow as possible. So the study vs. ski dilemma isn't purely desire over discipline, but two competing needs both with considerable consequences.
In the end, I ended up going for the ski, and it was well worth it. The snow was beautiful and I even got some studying in too. The message here isn't to skip out on studying the day before that exam you have to pass to go for a ski, but to know that as university skiers we're all in the same boat right now. Study hard for those exams, and get out there in the snow as much as you can manage. Christmas is right around the corner, where we will be able to ski until we can ski no more.
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