All picture credits to Nadine Lee.
I think the people who work out in the school gym are brave, because in my two-nearing-three years here, I've never had the inclination to step inside. A few reasons: The buff gym dudes lifting weights, the buff gym dudes benching, the buff gym girls lifting weights, the buff gym girls benching– and the sheer visibility of all of it, since the gym is situated along one long hallway's walk, glass walls all the way. It doesn't actually make sense for any gym to have glass walls, and I feel like the only reason that gyms do is to make sure people aren't doing anything weird in there.
(If you've seen the posters in the CJC club room – which I have seen because Justified shares a club room with them – you know what I mean. And if you haven't, make an educated guess.)
On the second day of Y2, I walked into the CJ Koh Library for the first time. Today, on the first day of Week 4, I walked into the gym for the first time.
Quite literally at first, because there are two doors to the gym and I pulled on the wrong door until my companion told me that we had to enter through the other side.
Immediate impressions: Peace and tranquility. I went in around 3:30pm, so most Y3s had departed after their Evidence lecture, Y2s had departed after Company, and Year 1s were heading to their Contracts lecture. Don't really care what the Y4s were doing. I've seen the gym more packed before, but according to some friends, it's almost never at full capacity. And why is that?
It's because a shocking number of the machines don't work. I tested a weight machine whose name I don't remember now, and there was no resistance at all – my companion confirmed his own experiences.
"Yeah, my friends thought I could lift but there was just no resistance." He seemed only mildly disappointed in himself.
Peace, unfortunately, often metastasizes into staleness, and the longer my companion (let's just call him J) and I stayed, the stickier the air felt. The atmosphere was getting uncomfortable. What an unfortunate time. The few people who were in the gym at that time didn't seem too bothered by it, though, so maybe it's just me and my general aversion to exercise. The treadmills were moving smoothly, and the weight racks… seemed to hold the weights well…? That's as good of an evaluation as I can give. Anyway, here are more pictures of the gym's equipment, so you can have an idea of what it offers.
I should add that I'd like to see the inside of the staff gym one day. There's a specific ILT-slash-Crim prof who's known to make good use of the staff gym, and I guess one day I'll ask him what it's like in there. I imagine it must be to the student gym what the staff lounge is to the student lounge – that is, better in every way, no expenses spared. (Obviously a huge shout out to the people who got the student lounge to look the way it is right now – it became a thing of beauty after the renovation. It's just that the staff lounge is leagues ahead, and you cannot beat a lounge with more than one window.)
(Also, I did not break into the staff lounge, there was a school event and I was there to get some food. But I will say this: The staff lounge has much, much colder water than the rest of the school. Make what you will of that.)
By the time I was done taking pictures, J was getting very restless and I'm pretty sure the other people in the gym thought I was there to do something bad, like steal a barbell.
To be honest, I don't think the BTC gym is as bad as people say it is, or as bad as I thought it was. It can be a little scary to go to a gym where all the walls are made of glass, but if it's any comfort, nobody cares, unless you're a Justified writer coming in to take photos of the equipment. Could the gym use a little sprucing up? Yes. Should it be a priority? I am not authorized to make a statement on that.
Why does the staff lounge have colder water than the student water coolers? That's what I want answers to.
Cheers, and welcome back to school.
