For most of my freshman year summer, I carried around this low-grade, simmering thought about joining cross country, like an unnecessarily heavy backpack. The idea was, quite frankly, wholly unhinged. I mean, who, in their right mind, voluntarily signs up to run distances that seem to violate some unwritten law of human thermodynamics? Running, to me, was something you did when you were being chased, or maybe late for a calculus test (except not me because calculus is for people who don’t have senioritis), or you or one of your teammates did something stupid at football practice. The concept of running for pure, unadulterated fun was just absolute garbage. It was a fundamental human mystery that I spent months pondering with dramatic intensity.

The internal monologue was wild: Do I need this? My body is already broken. Will college admissions committees actually care that I voluntarily subjected myself to this totally bizarre endeavor? My initial logic wasn't rooted in a sudden passion for fitness, but in a cynical, slightly desperate need to be perceived as a well-rounded human being on paper. By the time sophomore year rolled around, I needed something, anything, to puncture the monotony of my routine. I decided that if I were going to suffer, I might as well suffer publicly and earn a varsity letter for my efforts.

The first practice was a brutal wake-up call, confirming all my darkest fears. We were told to run something like three miles, and I quickly found myself schlepping it at the very back of the pack, lungs burning with a fervor I usually reserve for trying to write an entire research paper in one night. The other runners seemed like actual maniacs, discussing splits and mileage goals with an unnerving cheerfulness. I remember thinking, this is genuinely astronomical discomfort. Every joint ached, every breath felt like a failure, and my brain kept yelling, Stop! This is optional! Just go home and watch Netflix!

But then, something shifted. It wasn't a sudden surge of athletic prowess; I remained decidedly mid-pack, sometimes even mid-mid-pack. It was more of a vibe shift. The running itself didn't stop being physically painful, but the act of finishing, of showing up when every fiber of my being wanted to bail, became weirdly necessary. Cross country isn't about speed; it's about endurance and commitment. This whole enterprise taught me that you can, actually, put one foot in front of the other even when your body insists it's physically impossible. I realized that delayed gratification isn't a myth; it’s just incredibly annoying and takes forever to pay off. I learned how to commit to things, even if they felt like complete and utter torture at the outset. I’m not sure if these characteristics, commitment, perseverance, showing up even when it isn’t fun, are necessarily American, but rather, human. At some point, each person is confronted with a situation where there is a fork in the road, and they either show up or don’t. However, this can also be true of the American spirit: the grit that comes from people calling themselves American, people who aren’t willing to give up, no matter what.

So, here I am, a totally burnt out senior. I still wouldn’t say I love running, and the early mornings remain the worst part of any season. But signing up for that extraordinarily miserable commitment sophomore year was probably the single most useful thing I’ve done. It proved that I could push past the easy quit button, which, let's be honest, is a skill far more valuable than knowing when to correctly use a semicolon. (And yes, I got that varsity letter my senior season).

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