Getting PE credit at Westridge often confuses students. Is it really a graduation requirement? You’re telling me if I don’t sit in the dugout eating red vines for another softball season, I won’t graduate? I read recently that the average teenager burns about 1,400 calories every day just performing basic bodily functions (i.e. breathing, blinking, all of those things). So, by this logic, if I just like on my back for 12 hours, I am essentially doing a 12-hour, full-body workout. Westridge doesn’t seem to have the same rigorous definition of physical activity as students do, so we’re here to enlighten the administration. Here’s a quick list of activities that should earn us PE credit:
- Waiting for the “leave” button on Teams to work (no cardio workout could match the increase in heart rate this causes)
- Listening to a SodaStream make sparkling water (ear workout)
- Remembering the words to Surgere Tentamus (brain workout)
- Trying to do a cartwheel (obvious reasons)
- Making tie-dye that doesn’t look like faded rags (same precision and focus as 4 years of golf)
- Speaking a second language (mouth workout)
- Remembering to eat three meals a day during quarantine (the mental energy needed to pull this off burns at least 300 calories)
- Explaining to your mother that fermented foods smell like death and this is a shared space (fear = full-body workout)
- Wearing a beanie (requires the same amount of bravery as playing water polo)
- Taking Instagram photos for your friends (this is yoga)
- Remembering to buy toothpaste (mental exercise)
- Mindful chewing (tooth workout)
- Properly cutting a mango (hand workout)
- Pregnancy (every kind of workout)
- Resisting the urge to shave your head and join a cult (mental workout)
- Carrying a laundry basket (arguably the most exhausting activity known to man)
- Actively trying not to steal David Bowie’s brand (gay workout)
- Understanding the Cazort-Raines Marking System (eye workout)