Just for a moment, close your eyes and think about what you want in life.

Maybe you want money. Maybe an education. A husband or a wife. A family. A big, beautiful home in a nice neighbourhood. These are all good examples, sure. But the problem is, they’re all long-term commitments.

See, that’s why some people never make it through university. First year may be a blast. They may be on their game first year. But once third year hits, attrition’s taken its toll and everyone’s tired. Weary of exams, grouchy professors, and ramen noodles.

Grad school? Screw grad school.

But working out. Ah. Now see, that’s an activity that has the potential for short-term rewards.

There’s a spectacular feeling when you head to the gym three, four, five times a week. Every time, it’s a test. Can you stack on a little bit more weight this week? Or muster another repetition before you collapse in exhaustion?

You leave the gym and you feel good. You feel big. More confident. Hell, your legs may be on fire and you may have trouble walking down the stairs, but you feel like you’ve done something with your day.

Which was one of the reasons why I was so eager to haul my ass over here to Oxford.

“Just wait you guys,” I said to my friends before leaving, “once I get there, I’ll be all over the gym. I’m gonna get huuuuuuge”

Then I grunted like Tim Allen.

A new environment, I reasoned, coupled with a world class university was sure to motivate me like never before.

And besides, the university itself boasted that each of its 39 different colleges had its own weightlifting gym, along with the main sports center, which had a separate powerlifting gym.

They so lied.

You see, the main Oxford University gym — which, by the way, everybody brags as like, the one gym to end all gyms — well, it’s not quite as advertised.

It is, to put it succinctly, a shithole.

A little bit larger than my dormitory living quarters, it boasts three old, gently rusting racks (a power rack, a squat rack, and a bench rack), two benches, a smattering of Olympic plates, and two shelves of dumbbells that only go up to 80 lbs.

At first, you think, sure, I can work with this. Small, but functional.

But then you start running into problems.

There is, for example, no parallel dips bar. No Smith machine. No seated or bent over row machine. No pulldown station. The weighted belts are broken. And so on, and so forth.

This kind of gym would be acceptable in say, a high school. Hell, even a second-rate university or college.

But this is Oxford for crying out loud.

This is the famous, hoity-toity, prestigious Oxford.

Is this decrepit hole-in-the-wall not shown when the thousands of tourists and prospective students come to inspect the school?

And where the fuck is my tens of thousands of dollars in tuition going if not the gym?