By Rachel Schultz
Art school students aren’t stereotypical college kids. We stay up late hovering over a charcoal drawing instead of a physics textbook. We go to gallery openings instead of frat parties. And, instead of gaining the freshman 15, we lose it because we live off of coffee to stay up all night and finish our homework. We’re natural outsiders and sometimes we even feel out of place at SCAD.
Like at the gym.
This is where SCAD students feel different. We feel like we never have the time to exercise as much as we’d like to. At major universities, it seems like half the student body is at the gym at any given time. Their fitness centers are three stories tall and have built-in smoothie bars because their demand is just that high.
But that isn’t us. We’re at a school where we try to cram three classes into ten weeks. We’re constantly overwhelmed with too much to do so exercising becomes our last priority. After two and a half hours of class, which is spent stressing over the speech you have to give tomorrow, the last thing you have time for is the gym.
But, here’s where you’re wrong. Going to the gym might be just the thing you need.
The constant stress and nonstop work at SCAD isn’t the most healthy activity. Exercise has been proven to not only boost brain power, it also relieves stress. While you might think the most beneficial way to spend that spare hour you have between cramming for an art history test and printing out your typography is relaxing on the couch, hopping over to the gym may actually help you de-stress more.
Here’s where we come back to that issue of art kids feeling like outsiders. In a survey of 50 SCAD students, the major reason they cited as to why they don’t go to clubSCAD, the university’s fitness center, more often, or even at all, is that they don’t feel comfortable there.
Now maybe I’m biased because I work there, but I don’t understand this mentality. I think people have this idea that everyone who goes to clubSCAD goes every single day, pumps 150 pounds of iron and knows every machine by name.
But you’re forgetting, this is SCAD. Not all of us are those crazy workout types, remember? Everyone at the gym is just like you. They’re reading the instructions posted at the top of every machine and making up their own workouts as they go, and there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s no reason to feel intimidated.
Nervousness or embarrassment are normal if it’s your first time at the gym. You might think that everyone’s peeking out of the corner of their eyes and snickering, “Look at that girl trying to use that machine, she has no idea what she’s doing.” But, if you stop and look around you, you’ll see that no one is paying attention to you.
People pay attention to their own workout. There’s a huge misconception that the gym is a place to people watch, when the only people watching you are those that work there, and that’s only to make sure that everyone’s working out safely.
The great thing about clubSCAD is that the people who work there are all students. We’re one of you. Anyone wearing a black “SCAD Fitness” shirt, whether they’re behind the desk or out in the room training, is a fellow art school outsider and understands that not everyone there goes every day.
They get that you’ll need help working the leg press or that you don’t know where the fitness classes are held. They don’t think you’re weird for not knowing because you’re not the only one asking for help.
So just try it. Go to the gym. Don’t be intimidated. And, if you’re not intimidated, just stressed out, then take a deep breath, change into your running shoes and go exercise so you can remember the founding members of the Bauhaus on your test tomorrow.
See what to expect at clubSCAD before you go with this virtual tour of the gym.
Audio editing by Cooper Skinner
