#95: Running around the lakes (and other places)

Probably the most athletic students in the country (aside from the military academies), Notre Dame Students love to exercise.  While they certainly love playing basketball (see #76), football, and dodgeball, lifting weights in The Rock or Rolfs, and taking yoga classes, by far the most popular form of exercise for Notre Dame Students is running. 

Notre Dame Students are constantly running in different places across campus.  They run on treadmills in their dorms and at The Rock.  They run loops through the quads and fields around campus.  They run on elliptical machines in Rolfs while watching TV and reading People Magazine.  They run the roads to and through Saint Mary’s.  However, most often students run around the two lakes on campus.

Running around the lakes is the single most common form of exercise amongst Notre Dame Students.  They love to make the two-mile figure-eight around the lakes so that they can see all of the sites such as The Grotto (see #61), the reverse side of the Dome, and (of course) Carroll Hall.  Sometimes through treacherous patches of mud that destroy their pristinely clean running shoes, Notre Dame Students will run hundreds (and sometimes even thousands) of miles around these lakes over the course of their time at school; with the lakes always looking the same and the route never really becoming repetitive to Notre Dame Students.

While running is partially about exercise for Notre Dame Students, it also has other advantages.  Though Notre Dame Students like to be seen running so that they can show everybody how athletic they are, oftentimes their running is not very athletic.  If they are running inside, they will make sure to spend more time chatting with friends they meet than they do actually running. 

When they are running around the lakes, they will oftentimes make their running into a date and jog alongside their long-term relationship partner while neither really breaks a sweat (see #99).  Despite the fact that running has all of these great advantages for Notre Dame Students, they will still need to have a more concrete reason to justify all of their running and working out, and they find this purpose via charity runs. 

Charity runs like the Mara Fox Run, Finish on the 50, and the Holy Half Marathon give students the justification for working out while also making them feel better about themselves by raising money for charity (and they usually get t-shirts for running them, see #35).  These service-oriented students want to do good for the world, and these events give them a chance to put their running to a good use. 

Furthermore, in running these events, Notre Dame Students get even more excited about running and invariably start talking about how they are going to run a marathon.  Notre Dame Students love talking about running marathons because it shows their friends how much more running they are doing, and it also shows how dedicated they are to working out and raising money for charity (because Notre Dame Students prefer running marathons for charity).  However, in the end most Notre Dame Students will eschew running marathons for leisurely runs around the lakes.

Book Signings: THIS WEEKEND!!!

This weekend I'll be back on campus to watch the Irish take on our wannabe-rival Purdue, and while I'm home I'll be having a couple book signings at the Hammes Bookstore.  They are:

Friday, September 3rd: 1:00-3:00 PM

Saturday, September 4th: 11:30-1:30

You can join the Bookstore's Facebook event for them here: http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=146259492073975

I hope to see many of you there!!

GO IRISH!!!!

#94: Only riding with one cab driver

When Notre Dame Students leave the friendly confines of their campus for drinking purposes, the sensible choice that most make is to take a cab from campus or between off-campus locations.  Notre Dame Students take cabs to bars and house parties every weekend, and they have particular opinions about them.  While some younger students mainly just go to Main Circle and flag down any cab that comes their way, older students discover that they should have their own cab driver with whom they regularly ride.

Notre Dame Students like consistency and the comfort that comes with it.  They like knowing what is going to happen on any given night, and they like being able to dictate when and how things happen (see #25).  Because of this, Notre Dame Students love to have phone numbers for cab drivers in the area and they like to ride between bars and off-campus locations always with the same cab driver.

Students like their cab drivers because they get to know them.  They love the eccentricities that these cab drivers exhibit and the crazy stories that come with them.  They like listening to Christian rock in Jesus's cab, smoking (even though they don’t smoke) with Tony, hearing rumors about other cab drivers from DeeDee, and hearing ridiculous stories from Charlie Chin.  Notre Dame Students like their cab drivers because of the stories they tell and the experiences they can share.

Notre Dame Students also like cab drivers for any knowledge they can share on any given night.  Cab drivers always know where the parties are, and they always know which bars have the longest lines and which bars have been raided by the police.  Many cab drivers might even have some inside information about the football team to share (see #8).  Cab drivers hear things from all around town and they share them with the students who have become their friends.  

Ultimately, Notre Dame Students love their cab drivers because they are really the only locals with whom students have a chance to become friends.   Cab drivers tell their student friends about their lives during the brief trips around town, and students ultimately have a desire to continue riding with the same cab driver every night so that they can develop these relationships, as bizarre as they sometimes might be.

Not Just a Blog Any More. . .

Rarely do I like to write on this blog in the first person, but I’m writing today with great fear and a little bit of pride and excitement to announce that Things Notre Dame Students Like is now on sale as a book!!  From the great folks over at Corby Books, Things Notre Dame Students Like is available for purchase at the Hammes Bookstore on campus and you can order it online by clicking the link to the right (or you can click right here).

The book not only includes the entire list of Things up to and including the thrilling conclusion at #(you’ll have to buy the book to find out), but it also includes original never-before-seen material including:

• New and original charts and graphs that depict behaviors only touched upon on the blog
• New lists of Things other groups like including ND Professors and Coach Mike Brey
• New chapters to replace old and out of date entries such as #19 (although I still love The O.C.)

Beyond this, each and every chapter has been rewritten and revised to the point where some are completely different and bring up new points and ideas that were left out on the blog.

I hope you all check it out, and most importantly I hope you all continue to enjoy the Things Notre Dame Students Like.

-bob

#93: Not knowing what pot smells like

Notre Dame Students enjoy a rather privileged existence as undergraduates, and are able to fulfill many of the requisite conditions to living a life that is SO College (see #11) during their four years at Notre Dame.  In pursuit of this life, they happily undertake many activities of which ResLife, the heavy-handed disciplinary arm of the administration, would most certainly not approve.  Notre Dame Students break parietals regularly (although usually in pursuit of a future bride/groom instead of a casual hook- up), they build elaborate lofts in their dorms, and under these elaborate lofts they place elaborate bars filled with hard liquor that is certainly not permitted (see #92).

However, Notre Dame Students’ strident attempts at SO College debauchery does not extend (for the most part) to the use of recreational drugs.  Most students around the country smoke pot at least once during their college careers, and the drug is practically a legal commodity in California and other states.  At Notre Dame, however, this form of youthful experimentation is notably absent.  While at other schools smoking pot is widely accepted as part of the college experience, at Notre Dame the emphasis on dorm life and the sheltered upbringings of its students within the Notre Dame Bubble combine to create a stigma attached to the use of pot. 

First, Notre Dame Students are generally obedient and enjoy following rules and instructions.  While some of their state school counterparts might feel less nervous about having pot in their dorms than having alcohol, Notre Dame Students fully understand the administrative risks that would come from lighting up in their dorms.  Even when Notre Dame Students leave campus to party and live in off-campus residences, they generally continue to reject pot even though it is something many of them might reasonably consider using in other circumstances. 

While some may have smoked in high school, once at Notre Dame they become fearful of the Kyle McAlarney treatment and refuse to do it at all (except in some incredibly rare and highly sketchy situations).  These students know how important their education is, and they know how ruthless ResLife is, and instead opt for a safer and more conservative path to being SO College.

Because of this, a drug that is fairly easy to come by on college campuses around the country is nearly impossible to find at Notre Dame.  Furthermore, the vast majority of Notre Dame Students (who were too busy building their college applications in high school) make it through their entire college careers not really aware of how pot works or what the drug even smells like.  This leads to interesting conversations with people at non-Notre Dame parties that might include silly comments such as “I think someone let a skunk out in the other room,” and “How does that glass thing on the coffee table even work?”  The non-ND friends will laugh, admiring the adorable naïveté that also results in curious character features such as being confused about the definition of hooking up (see #21).

At any other university, the ignorance about such a widely-used drug would be rare, but at Notre Dame it is widespread.  Notre Dame Students are told from the outset that it is okay for them to drink, but it is not okay for them to use drugs.  Because Notre Dame Students almost always follow the instructions they are given from their elders and peers, they listen to these rules.  As a result, most Notre Dame graduates head off into the world unaware of the distinct smell of marijuana smoke.