Last night, I had the pleasure of attending the Pittsburgh Penguins and Philadelphia Flyers game–the battle of PA. As a lifelong Penguins fan that lives near Philadelphia, I have always gotten a lot of guff for my choice in teams and that sure didn’t change for this game. I can’t even count the number of times the fan directly behind me yelled “SiDnEy’S a GiRls NaMe” at me during the game. It didn’t help that the Penguins were trailing behind for the entirety of the contest.
The team looked slow, passionless, and frazzled for all 3 periods, which is not characteristic of the hockey team I am used to seeing. To Philly’s delight they finished the game without scoring a single goal. This is the first time they were shutout since the beginning of the season. On the drive back from Philly, I questioned what went wrong during the game.
The team had been playing on almost every other night for almost the past three weeks while riddled with injury, and it seems like they just ran out of gas. However, the Penguins’ coach, Mike Sullivan, would not allow the team to chalk up the loss to being tired. Although I understood his sentiment, I see the loss as a good opportunity for the team to hit the reset button. The team always bounces back for bad losses and I’m sure they will again.
In relation to the loss, I also thought about the fatigue that we can experience by working hard each and every day without ever taking a break. As college students we seem to experience this all the time. 3 midterms and a paper due? No problem, I’ll get that done easy. Sometimes with all the commotion of life we forget that we need to allow ourselves time to reset or no matter how hard we work, we will not be able to keep up with those going against us. With the start of the new semester, I hope that everyone takes the time to spread out their work to minimize the effect of fatigue as much as possible.
Hi Luke,
I’m a huge Flyers fan and really enjoyed watching that game. The Flyers looked uncharacteristically dominant, although I do have to admit that as you mentioned, the Pens looked off.
Throughout my time at Penn State, I have experienced various levels of fatigue. During the spring semester of my sophomore year, I was incredibly exhausted due to class responsibilities and lab deadlines. This long-term state of reduced sleep turned out to be pretty unhealthy for me and led to burn out my junior year. After that experience, I’ve prioritized my well-being through more sleep and dedicated time for myself. I know that sometimes my responsibilities don’t allow me as much rest as I’d like (kind of as how the Pens can’t control having such an intense schedule), but luckily I’m surrounded by mentors and professors who understand and encourage well-being breaks when I need them and don’t expect continuous work all the time. In the future, I plan to remember this feeling and do the same for my mentees because we honestly deserve more than that body-numbing fatigue.