Renee,

I read your article on Student Athletes earlier today, and I wanted to reach out to about your work.

I normally pick up a copy of the Daily Illini on my way to Memorial Stadium’s physical rehabilitation center each morning, every morning, at 5:30am. Over the past 6 months of rehabilitating my elbow, each morning, every morning, at 5:30am, I have become accustomed to and incredibly fond of catching up on my campus life through the Daily Illini. Sometimes I even like to get a little crazy and take a swing at the crossword, but that’s another story for a different time.

Unfortunately, today was slightly different. Something didn’t really click with my normal routine. It was almost as if the Daily Illini was specifically telling me, “Bryan, put this newspaper down because I don’t love you and you don’t deserve me.” Needless to say, it was difficult to swallow.

Now, I’d assume a senior at the prestigious University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (much less a staff writer at the Daily Illini) would have enough common sense to rationalize why I had such feelings. But I can’t make that assumption with you. I can’t make that assumption with you because I read your work today, which made something painfully obvious to me – you have rocks in your head.

Not metaphorical, proverbial, thematic, or hyperbolic rocks. I’m talking about actual rocks. Like legitimate, Geology 100 sedimentary rocks. Why do you have rocks in your head?

Because there’s NO WAY anyone with any semblance of logic and other basic decision making tools could draw the conclusions you offered our student body today. NO WAY JOSE.

Then again, maybe you don’t have rocks in your head. Maybe you just don’t have a clue because you never really figured it out, if you know what I mean. I remember those days myself. Granted, it was 1998 and I was 9 years old, but that’s not the point. Point is, I sympathize with you, and I want to help you figure it out. With that being said, let me turn it over to my roommate Luke, who will walk you through his average day. I’d do it myself, but my schedule is slightly different than that of the rest of the team due to my rehabilitation, even though he had elbow surgery too. Oh and I have to go to Irwin and print off my slides for class tomorrow morning. PS – WE GET FREE PRINTING. Anyways, here’s Luke

5:15 – wake up

5:15 – contemplate going back to sleep

5:16 – go back to sleep

5:17 – wake up again

5:20 – eat half of cliff bar and drink warm bottle of gatorade I bought with my own money because I play a non revenue sport

5:22 – drive to Irwin indoor facility while other roommate frantically scrapes ice covered windshield

5:26 – somehow drive across campus without wrecking car despite limited visibility.

5:26 – park illegally. ackknowledge that I run risk of getting ticket but would rather not run risk of being late and being punished. pray I dont get a ticket.

5:27 – slip and fall on ice while running to door of indoor facility

5:27 – roommate stops to laugh but does not help me up.

5:27 – roommate resumes running to door

5:27 – contemplate faking injury from falling on ice to avoid morning conditioning

5:27 – realize that would only make things worse. get up and continue running to door.

5:28 – arrive at morning conditioning

5:29 – give and receive death stares amongst teammates. Tell Naso he needs a shower because the Axe body spray does not cut it.

5:30 – begin morning conditioning

5:51 – puke up my cliff bar. strength coach yells “LETS GO LUKE DONT PUKE”

5:52 – everyone starts calling me Puke because it rhymes with Luke

5:58 – realize that everyone will call me Puke for the rest of my time at Illinois.

5:59 – hate every teammate that calls me puke

6:00 – learn to embrace new nickname

6:15 – finish team conditioning. learn that the athletic department reported that one of our freshmen missed a Friday 8am class three weeks ago. immediately become unhappy because…

6:16 – start running again. 100 yard sprints down and back. coach has not yet said how many of them we will run. usuaully not a good sign.

6:26 – contemplate faking back injury because I can’t put up with this right now

6:27 – freshman stops running because his “hamstring is flaring up”.

6:27 – everyone now hates that freshman and will for the unforseeable future

6:42 – stop running. get yelled at about importance of going to class. think about rolling my eyes but cannot find will power to move the muscles associated with rolling my eyes. Seeing stars but still realize we have to lift now.

6:48 – walk into weight room. begin lifting weights while Eye of the Tiger plays very loudly over the speakers.

7:55 – finish lifting weights. leave weight room while Eye of the Tiger plays very loudly over the speakers.

8:03 – get home. shower. Crush protein shake because, well, because I “want it”

8:10 – go back to sleep

8:45 – wake up and go to class

8:48 – realize ticket on front windshield of car. realize it is from earlier at the indoor facility. become slightly alarmed that I did not have the ability to recognize a parking ticket on my windshield yet had the ability to safely drive home.

8:54 – get to class

8:55:01 – google “driving infractions too tired health dangers”

8:55:01.26 – google returns over 6,000,000 items related to my search

8:56 – tweet: “not sure if there’s an exhaustion legal limit, but if so, I was over it today #KillME”

8:58 – Parr twins retweet me within seconds. get a little creeped out

8:59 – 3 girl townies favorite tweet, become extremely alarmed.

9:00 – class begins

10:50 – class ends

11:00 – class begins

11:50 – class ends

11:53 – swipe into Irwin. contemplate leaving to get food while swiped in, but then remember that I don’t have any money because I cant get a job on campus because I don’t have the time to work because I represent my school in athletic competition in my free time. decide to stay.

11:54 – hunger wins. order Jimmy Johns gargantuan.

11:59 – Jimmy Johns shows up. Legitimately use the word “freaky” when describing how fast the delivery was to my teammate

11:59 – teammate punches me in arm while walking in giving the casual, “howeru” in which I reply, “soo gooood.”

12:00 – meet with tutor about stuff I was supposed to learn last thursday but didnt because I was on a bus to to Ohio state, approximately 8 hours away. eat garantuan sandwich in under 3 minutes.

12:03 – tutor looks at me with disgust as I slam a Gatorade to relieve the sensations of the extra hot peppers I ordered

12:06 – tutor loses me with a long winded answer to what I thought was a simple question

12:08 – regain attention when he compares example in textbook to hierarchy of an NFL front office, which reminds me how much I love the NFL and how awesome Tom Brady is

12:09 – tutor starts drawing graph. realize there will be no more football references for me to relate to.

12:10 – appreciate tutor’s unbelievable craftmanship while drawing straight lines with no ruler or straight edge tool

12:11 – tutor starts explaining graph, which looks like just a big X

12:12 – tutor says the word “equilibrium”

12:13 – officially lost

12:55 – tutor asks, “does that make sense?” while pointing to the exact same graph he drew 42 minutes ago

12:55 – nod my head and say “yeah no really I got it yeah I think yeah that makes sense for sure.”

12:58 – pack up computer and walk to armory for last class of day

1:00 – speech comm 101 begins

1:22 – make speech about lessons learned in athletics – my 4th speech of the semester.

1:25 – finish speech with quote from Vince Lombardi about the importance of teamwork. Hope this makes up for the fact that I went 7 minutes under the 10 minute speech time limit. Also hope that no one recognizes that this speech is a combination of my previous 3 speeches, all of which centered on the importance of sports

1:25 – teacher says “Thanks” and then asks me to sit down. She then takes a brief minute to generally address the class about the importance of diversifying our speech topics.

1:25 – realize she is directing this at me

1:25 – don’t care because I have bigger things to worry about, like getting more than 4 hours of sleep tonight, or icing my hamstrings after practice, or pitching against Michigan State this friday in front of 5,000 people to maintain our half game lead in the big ten standings, which could help us get back to the NCAA tournament and give my program more exposure, which could hopefully get us more funding from the university and persuade top recruits to come play at Illinois which could then lead to more NCAA appearances and big ten championships.

1:50 – class is over

1:58 – walk back to car and see another parking ticket

1:58 – contemplate letting air out of Meter Maid’s pick up truck while she victimizes innocent cars up and down 4th street

1:58 – recognize teammates car parked across street from mine

1:59 – put my new parking ticket on his windshield

2:00 – text him “dude.. just saw meter maid light you up for a ticket. tried to stop her but SHE WASNT GIVING INTO THE CHARM”

2:02 – receive text back from teammate that reads: “FML”

2:02 – text teammate back “FML was so two years ago”

2:03 – teammate texts back “dont get bush. oh and dont forget practice is supposed to go late tonight because high school coaching clinic is in town”

2:03 – text teammate back “FML”

2:20 – get jimmy johns again.

2:25 – go to field. dress for practice.

2:33 – go to practice. run. hit fungos. run some more. play catch. run. do light arm exercises while staring at brick wall for 45 minutes. team conditioning. put on clinic for high school coaches. nod and smile a lot. shake over 50 hands. speak fondly of life as an athlete. quitely think to self that life could not be more stressful, repetitive, and unlike that of any of my college peers.

7:14 – practice over. shower. go back to IRWIN

7:20 – arrive at Irwin. order Jimmy Johns.

7:25 – Jimmy Johns arrives. Literally stunned with their ability to deliver a well made sandwich in such a short time period. eat jimmy johns before I can sit back down.

7:30 – Stare at online homework problems. No clue what is on screen because they covered it last Friday when I was out of town.

8:20 – get 48% on homework

8:21 – realize I can take homework as many times as I want.

8:22 – take 25 question homework again and try to memorize answers. get 41%.

8:22 – become alarmed that I got 7% points lower on second attempt

9:03 – get 100% on homework after 13 attempts

9:04 – stare at computer screen until 10pm

10:00 – go home

10:01 – send text message to group members apologizing for my absence from a group meeting at the UGL that I missed earlier in the evening. cite my need to meet with a tutor when in actuality I just need to log 12 Irwin hours between Monday and Thursday, every week, making it almost impossible to do anything in my free time other than sit at Irwin and pretend to be productive. I take some consolation in realizing that athletic talents allow me to attend such a great school, and that I do everything that I can to make up for my academic shortcomings because competing at this level is more important to me. And it will always be more important to me.

10:03 – tell roommate that if I get drafted, even as the last pick in the last round, I’m definitely signing because this lifestyle absolutely blows

10:03 – roommate agrees

10:30 – go to Joes

REPEAT, EVERYDAY

LOVE, MIKE on behalf of LUKE

p.s. – 8th grade dance night tonight sweetheart? Just kidding we have morning workouts.

@Sterkwood

#JealousRenee