“Living on a Prayer” by Bon Jovi. One of my earliest memories of my physical education is running laps around the gymnasium of Whiting Lane, while listening to Bon Jovi and what I made out to be my gym teacher’s favorite classics, songs such as “Y.M.C.A.,” “The Cupid Shuffle,” and a surprising amount of Kidz Bop (wow, they have been making albums for a disgustingly long amount of time–since 2001!!). When I would come home singing various ‘70s and ‘80s songs, my mothers would consistently inquire as to where I had learned such an old song. “In gym,” I would always respond. My love of The Beach Boys as well as other ‘80s songs, which lives on to this day, should be ascribed to all those years of running in circles like a broken record; Music playing in the background a soundtrack, etching lyrics and melodies into my mind.  Six years later and it is apparent that my memory of my elementary physical education is confined to Kidz Bop and Pedometers; if you said the yield of five years of gym classes was close to nothing, you wouldn’t be far off.

The majority of my physical education has never been what I would consider to be  physically challenging. Yet again I find myself running in circles, embarking on my eleventh year of gym class, and quite honestly, I am beginning to question the system (and getting tired of it). As of last year, the teachers of physical education introduced the “Make-Up Policy.” If you are absent for a day of class, regardless of the cause of said absence, you are expected to complete a workout in the weight room less than one week later. Truthfully, it seemed fair at first; since making up work for other classes is expected of students, why shouldn’t gym class fall under the same parameters? This was until I ran afoul of this policy. My previous history with this policy was not a dreadful experience–I completed my workout in approximately 45 minutes and was picked up by my lovely mother several moments after.

Later, in the spring of my sophomore year, I decided to jump on the bandwagon and join my friends for the track season, most of whom are three-season varsity runners. However, unlike my friends, distance was not my forté, so I resorted to sprinting. Similar to getting a shot at the doctor’s office, I found sprinting to be a sharp pain, one which was over before my mind had processed the fact that the race had begun. In spite of my generally mediocre race times, and an injury that rendered me inept for the beginning of the season, I wholeheartedly enjoyed being on the team. I loved feeling in shape, and simply adored my teammates; above all, there was a sense of fulfillment in being part of a team, to be contributing to a purpose greater than myself.

By running track I am able to not only maintain a level of fitness and healthiness, but I am also interacting with many of my friends after school every day. By making up mandatory gym classes, I am forced to miss activity which is more beneficial to my body and in which I take pleasure. Making a student who plays football, soccer, or any sport miss a practice to make up a gym class, which in both cases, the student would be physically developing themselves, seems nothing short of lunacy. I am sure I can’t be alone in believing that this is the epitome of counterproductiveness.

Like any normal human being, I was prone to sickness and also had commitments that resulted in my occasional absence from school. Consequently I missed practice, and anyone who has run for Hall understands, missing practice should not become a persistent occurrence. As I had previously mentioned,  an injury early in the season had already been the culprit for my absence at a couple of meets and a dozen or so practices, so you could say I was not keen on missing any more days of track. However, my occasional lack of presence, which was not something more than the average student’s, resulted in an increasing nonattendance at track at double the rate of my physical education.

Furthermore, I think the four-year physical education requirement is absolutely excessive and unwarranted, especially for student athletes, who already undergo a considerable amount of exercise every day. If a student is taking part in at least two seasons of sports, each of which typically meets a minimum a five days a week, they should be exempt from the PE requirement. For students who have dropped a lunch and are painfully over scheduled with classes, such an opening would give them the opportunity to have a period to each lunch, get more work done, or for the more intrepid of students, add yet another class. Regardless of the changes being made to my physical education, I doubt it will ever amount to much more than Bon Jovi.