Obviously this blog post has to be about BPA.
Last weekend’s BPA state trip was a fever dream: a complete blur. 3 days of lounging in a hotel for only thirty minutes of actual competition. A weekend filled with procrastination, napping, trying not to be sick, and heading into the judges room with zero preparation but still managing to snag some hardware.
We left on Thursday but I was mentally checked out from Monday. Something about only having a three day school week for three weeks (BPA, DECA, and Parent Teacher Conferences) just made me feel like school isn’t real. Time was going faster than I expected and especially with lacrosse starting, I already saw myself in May, disconnected from my current reality.
When we arrived at the hotel, it was a dump. The rooms were so thin, the hallways were tiny, and each room felt so cramped. But whatever, right? High school kids don’t need much. We navigated through the tiny and creaky elevators, the crowded lobby, and the doordash orders that always surpassed one hundred and fifty dollars.
After all of us got our schedule, I realized that both of my events were tomorrow and I had absolutely nothing to do today. So while the rest of my friends studied for their events, frantically scanning through printed notes and quizlets, asking each other why each question was right, I just took the fattest nap.
That’s all I did the whole day on Thursday, nap.
In my defense, I was a little sick and my cough, bad throat, and light fever did not motivate me to get out of bed to explore the hotel, the mall, go out for food, and socialize with new people. I was comfortable in my little world: the hotel room with my friends. Maybe it is because we were not freshmen anymore, comfort and security I find in my established group of friends overtook the need to explore and find new people.
For lunch, we got KFC (like true Americans). For dinner, we ordered Cheesecake Factory. Our room smelled like fried chicken and pasta, and I somehow still managed to nap in it. I lost half of my friends for a few hours in the evening, but that didn’t really affect me… because I was napping.
I finally decided to leave the room with my friends in the late evening to go to BPA game night. I left ten minutes after being there. The lights were all on, all of the games were filled, and huge groups of people were gatekeeping each activity.
I know I made it seem awful and boring, but a day to just sleep and spend a day inside a hotel room with all of my friends just talking is truly what I needed.
The next day I had to get up at 7am and get ready for my event. Both of my events went pretty well, and I made it to the second round for one of my events. The judge forgot to tell me to check back in for a second round. I saw the finalists sheet because of a stroke of luck as I was waiting to go into another event. I still felt awful, and my seventeen dollar breakfast buffet still did not make me feel any better. I took another nap and then got ready for the banquet dinner and “BPA Dance”.
The chicken dinner and the mosh pit at the dance were nice, except for the fact that DECA just does it better. A group of kids in the dance went so hard they knocked the sound system over and they spent five minutes setting it back up. Our social battery drained, and we went back to the room to watch some Netflix and call it a night.
We started watching this Korean show called Physical 100, which is trending on Netflix shows right now. The 100 strongest men and women in Korea compete in a series of competitions, including seeing who can hang on high bars for the longest, seeing which team can haul the most amount of sand bags over a bridge, and even one on one competitions that ended in immediate elimination.
It was such a low key weekend, filled with really doing nothing. I was floating around with no thoughts in my head. But ultimately, I was so glad it was a lame weekend. I needed a reset, a break, and just some time to be antisocial while still being with all of my friends.
Love you, BPA.