Fish Tales
The University of North Carolina (the first state university in the nation) is a great place to waste spend five years of your life, but it has some dumb-ass traditions that other system schools don't share (including that retarded ram with the painted blue horns on the football field that likes to shit bricks as it gets run across).
For example, in order to graduate from Carolina, you have to pass a swimming test. I'm so not joking. Here we are with Duke down the street eliminating its 8 a.m. classes and Carolina still makes students take a swim test. How's that for "sink or swim", eh?
I'll be honest: I couldn't swim worth a damn when I got to Carolina. I still don't trust myself to swim, although I guess I "technically" know how. I float like a wet marshmallow, too. Leave me in long enough and I'll most certainly sink to the bottom. I found out about that whole swim test thing during orientation and I think I almost cried. The girl sitting next to me got all excited because she'd get to wear a cute bathing suit. She could swim of course. Of course! She was mostly blubber. She would float even if you used her as a pool sofa. "Can't you swim, Tiff?" she said.
"HELL no I can't swim!"
The thought of putting my head under water was terrifying (which is odd considering I was raised in a sailing community)...
There are lots of tall tales going around about why the hell there's a swim test at UNC in the first place. Most people believe in the lore that one of the financial supporters of the school (the same guy whom one of the indoor pools is named after) lost a kid to drowning and brought down an iron fist on the entire undergraduate body. I've since learned this isn't true, but have learned that they'll be eliminating the swim test in 2008.
Of course, if you have physical or mental handicaps you wouldn't have to take the test. I seriously considered going down to Student Health, putting on a show of hysterics, and getting a psychological exemption. I've done such in other situations but this time I didn't do it. I felt just a smidge of pride for once in my life. I didn't want to fit into that "Black Person Can't Swim" stereotype anymore.
I couldn't learn to swim on my own, so I knew I would need to use one of my P.E.s to take the "beginner's" class. I started the summer after freshman year just so that I'd have plenty of time to learn how. It was a bitch. Wearing a bathing suit every day in front of a room full of adult strangers in goggles and designer swimming trunks, chlorinated hair, smelling like au de pool water all the time...
I passed that Got-Damned swim test on the first try because there was no way in hell I was going to fail in front of all those people. (Oh, the swim test requires you to jump in the deep end, push off the bottom, come up, swim to the middle of the pool, swim back, and then stay afloat without touching bottom or sides for the rest of the five minutes).
I was thinking about this shit yesterday because I was kind of pissed that the brats coming in now don't have to do it. When we complained, no one listened. They accused us of wanting to break tradition.
Bitches.
How'd you all learn to swim?
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I wonder how widespread that swim test used to be. When I was a freshman, my alma mater had just eliminated the swim test. It, too, had the drowned-rich-kid rationale.
I have never heard of such a thing! When I was 7, my mother drove my little brother and I 60 miles to the YMCA in Boise three days a week for our swimming lessons. I had the biggest crush on my instructor. Sigh...
That sounds like a dumb ass requirement to me. I used to take swim lessons at the local YWCA. I vaguely remember something about being a guppy or a shark or something. I can keep myself from drowning for short periods of time, but that's about it.
I've been able to swim for as long as I can remember. I think my mom took me to classes the day I was born or something. I'm one of those freaks that doesn't understand how people can NOT swim.