From workout to burnout

It is an indisputable fact that working out at the campus rec center is an smart move: it keeps me in shape, gets the endorphins flowing, and gives me an opportunity to take out my frustrations on mindless equipment.

Despite this, I'm convinced that working out makes me stupid--that every second I spend up there in that big booming building drains my brain cells, paralyzes my critical thinking skills, and hampers my ability to communicate clearly. I'm up there pounding away on the elliptical machine while my ears are assaulted by piped-in pop music set just a tad too loud and my eyes can wander between televisions set to stations that seem to originate in entirely different planets, none of them my own. Angry guys argue about their fantasy football teams on one scream while on the other Dr. Phil yells at a family about how unhelpful it is when they yell at each other. Sometimes the TV's are showing soap operas, and sometimes there are cooking shows focusing, in one instance, on the entire process of the making of haggis.

I am convinced that a regular diet of daytime television absorbed while my brain cells are being jiggled violently up and down will pummel my brain into a mass of mush. As evidence, I present today's African-American Lit class, which I taught after making the fatal error of exercising during my lunch hour. I normally exercise after all my teaching is done for the day so as to minimize the chance of humiliating myself, but I have meetings all afternoon so I worked out just before class.

This was a mistake, as I realized in the middle of class when I lost track of what I was saying in the middle of a sentence. I had trouble retrieving important information, fumbled on simple words, and even referred authoritatively to the Legend of the Frying African, which is not at all what I meant. And then about ten minutes before class was due to be over, I ran out of steam. The words just stop working, the ideas stopped arriving, and the energy pooped out. I guess I left it in the rec center.

I need to find a way to fit exercise into my life even on days when I have a million meetings. How's this for brilliant: next time I have a schedule like today's, I'll take the whole class to the rec center with me and teach from my perch atop the elliptical machine. I may not be any smarter over there, but in that context, the students will never notice.