Interesting Times

These are interesting times to be sure – both at Bethel and, it would seem, at home as well. The Prime Minister doesn’t seem to have instituted these latest lockdown measures with as nearly as much reluctance as with the first time around back in May. I’m almost glad that I’m not at home right now, suffering through restrictions that seem as excessive as they are unnecessary. I share all of your disappointment at the cancellation of the Road Relays, especially considering it was members of the Endurance Program who had invested so much time and effort into organizing the event. Let us hope that they will not be postponed for long, though this cancellation seems to throw a shade of doubt on whether the English cross-country season will proceed as normal. The relays, should they be permitted to happen, will be a major success I’m sure. Not only will they mark the proper beginning of post – covid team racing, after a five-month overture, but they will give Wirral AC the opportunity to showcase its incredible endurance program. The club has already been attracting plenty of attention over the past few weeks with its performances at the BMC and elsewhere. There’s been some remarkable individual performances, which I wish I would have been able to see in person. Me and Emily are both very proud, its really an honour to see Wirral athletes reaching such incredible heights so early on in their careers.

Bethel is faring much better coronavirus – wise. We’re set to move into the ‘green stage’, which I think means that we’ve had no diagnosed cases of Covid – 19 in a fortnight. Training is progressing well, though I have felt pretty tired this week. We’re getting ready for our home meet, which will be this Saturday. It’s quite high profile, and we’re expecting a large number of teams. It will be the first time that we actually race many of the teams in our conference, since a lot of them failed to attend the pre – conference meet last Friday. We’re actually very fortunate that we’re being allowed to compete at all. Many Colleges across the US have cancelled their Fall seasons. Kansas is one of the outliers in that it’s permitting almost all competitions to go ahead. I’ve been enjoying watching the other Bethel teams competing. I’ve seen the women’s volleyball and the men’s soccer thus far – with the teams losing and winning respectively. I enjoyed the volleyball, even though we lost. The Americans seem to have a lot more enthusiasm for such things than us; they treat every sport like we treat the Premier League. It makes things which I wouldn’t normally consider to be that exciting really enjoyable – I’m looking forward to watching the rest of our teams compete over the coming weeks.

At the Volleyball. 

American Colleges also care a great deal more about student participation than English Universities. They actively encourage what we would call ‘extra-curricular’ participation by offering credit towards degrees if you regularly write for the Collegiate newspaper, sing on the Concert Choir (amongst other things). I’m currently doing both of the aforementioned activities. Alongside this, the College demands that you dedicate yourself far more to your academic subjects. Class participation, which involves contributing answers and engaging in the debate that follows them, is expected – and forms a significant part of your grade. You receive homework regularly, oftentimes after every class, which means that stuff really starts to back up unless you keep on top of it. Balancing this with my cross-country training, which takes up a couple of hours in a day generally, means that I have to organize and structure my work times, usually the night before.

This is the full sized indoor Football pitch in Wichita. It's a medium sized town
with about 300,000 people, buts its got some crazy facilities. Outside is a football 
with four 11 - aside astro turf pitches, and a dozen or so 7 - aside pitches.

It’s a small campus but there’s plenty of energetic clubs, which means that there’s a lot of student led events in the evenings, usually between 6 and 9pm. You can make time to do things outside of College if you plan ahead. I’ll mostly save that kind of stuff for the weekends – American College follows the normal working week, which means that there’s no classes on Saturday or Sunday. Some of the cross-country team are planning to visit a famous Wichita attraction in October, known as the ‘Field of Screams’. I’m looking forward to it with some trepidation, since I don’t really have that much experience with such events. However, I agreed to go because that’s apparently what everybody does in America at Halloween. Why you would ever do something for the sake of getting scared is beyond me, but there we go. The Americans are a bit crazier than us I guess.

Not a great picture, but oh well. This is the type of car that you see quite regularly 
- I didn't think I'd see them anywhere outside of a 1950s film set!