I

t’s 7:45 a.m. We’re walking 
down East Liberty Street. 
I 
have 
two 
rakes 
in 
my hand, and Shannon, my 
roommate, has a drawstring 
bag on her back that holds a 
spade, a fork, a hoe and a pair 
of shears. We’re excited, if 
not a little bit sheepish, about 
the adventure that lies ahead 
of us. I learned early on in 
my time at the University of 
Michigan that “wasting time,” 
which is broadly defined as 
“doing something that you 
aren’t going to put on your 
resume,” is a criminal offense, 
and, up until now, I’ve been 
utterly opposed to breaking 
the law. But not today. Today I 
don’t care if I’m wasting time. 
Today I’m going to play in the 
yard.
We arrive at a pretty little 
house with lots of weeds in the 
yard and set our tools down 
on the front porch. Shannon 
takes one side of the sidewalk 
and I take the other. We dig 
out weeds with our hands and 
talk about the adventures we 
want to go on this summer. I 
pull my hair into a ponytail so 
I can feel the sun on the back 
of my neck. I’m having fun. 
Is that what it’s called? Fun? 
I haven’t had this much dirt 
underneath 
my 
fingernails 
since I was 8 years old digging 
for treasure in my backyard. 
Of course, I’m 20 years old, 
and therefore way too old to 
play in the yard. I’m in college, 
meaning I should be spending 
every spare moment making 
myself 
more 
“employable,” 
whatever that means. In two 
years, I will have graduated 
and 
officially 
entered 
the 
job market, and no employer 
wants to hire a girl who uses 
her valuable free time to play 
in the dirt.
About 
41 
percent 
of 
Americans let some of their 
paid 
vacation 
days 
go 
to 
waste, 
likely 
because 
they 
don’t want to be perceived as 
lazy for taking advantage of 
the benefits outlined in their 
contract. In fact, this survey of 
U.S. corporate managers finds 
that 
many 
equate 
working 
longer hours with being more 
dedicated, more hardworking 
and more responsible. Michael 
Bloomberg’s 
career 
advice? 
Don’t even go to the bathroom, 

let alone take time off to take 
a vacation or play in the dirt. 
In 2011, he said, “I am not 
smarter than anybody else 
but I can outwork you – and 
my key to success for you, or 
anybody else, is making sure 
you are the first one in there 
every day and the last one to 
leave. Don’t ever take a lunch 
break or go to the bathroom, 
you keep working.”

I’m a sucker for this kind 
of 
industriousness. 
That’s 
why I’m at the University of 
Michigan! I take pride in my 
ability to work hard. During 
the school year, I didn’t take 
any 
breaks. 
I 
outworked 
everyone else and I didn’t rest 
or relax at all-- that is, until I 
sat myself down on my couch 
to tell Shannon a funny story. 
But when I opened my mouth, 
instead 
of 
words 
coming 
out, I just started crying. “I 
think we’ve finally done it,” 
Shannon said. “I think we’ve 
finally worked ourselves past 
our breaking points.”
So we decided to go back to 
where we came from the front 
yard, playing in the dirt. The 
same place we spent every 
summer until we hit 12 years 
old and realized that playing 
in the dirt isn’t productive 
and that we should be using 
the spare time to set goals 
and get jobs. Maybe someday 
I’ll really reach adulthood, 
and I’ll be able to work, work, 
work from sunup to sundown, 
and it won’t kill me or run me 
dry. But right now, at 20 years 
old, I’m still better suited for 
playing in the dirt than I am 
for sitting at desk 12 hours a 
day. Figures.
It’s 10 a.m. now, so it’s time 
to put wipe the dirt off our 

knees and walk back down 
East Liberty Street to get 
home. I remember playing in 
the backyard with my sister, 
and 
my 
dad 
would 
come 
outside and ruin all the fun 
by telling us it was time to go 
to bed. Summer was the best 
time of year because when our 
faces fell and we told him we 
weren’t tired yet, he would 
remind us that we didn’t have 
school the next day and we 
could go back outside first 
thing in the morning if we 
wanted to.
Shannon and I wash the 
dirt 
out 
from 
underneath 
our fingernails, and we put 
slacks 
and 
button-downs 
over our sunburnt, mosquito-
bitten bodies. We will go 
about the rest of our days 
without 
committing 
any 
unspoken criminal offenses. 
In two years, when we start 
interviewing 
for 
our 
first 
“big-kid jobs,” we’ll tell the 
employers about how in the 
summer of 2018, we spent 
our 
afternoons 
in 
offices 
completing 
internships. 
We won’t tell them about 
mornings when we played in 
the dirt and let the sun beat 
down on the backs of our 
necks. We won’t tell them 
about how if we hadn’t let 
ourselves play in the dirt that 
summer, even just a little bit, 
we might not have made it 
through summer at all.
When 
you 
spend 
your 
summer in Ann Arbor, it’s 
hard for it to feel like summer, 
because, like it or not, it’s still 
Ann Arbor. It’s still the lovely 
little town that worked you 
until you ran dry all winter, 
the lovely little town where 
you received your first failing 
grades and got rejected from 
your first jobs. When you walk 
down East Liberty Street, it’s 
hard to believe that you’re 
allowed to end up somewhere 
besides the Starbucks where 
you studied every evening 
during the winter semester. 
But if you ever want to join 
Shannon and me when we’re 
playing in the dirt, I highly 
recommend it. We leave at 
7:45 a.m. I promise I won’t tell 
your future employer.

5
OPINION

Thursday, May 24, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Many of these issues 
arise from abuse from the 
male coaches; these are 
the most common cases.
I myself can speak to 
this 
issue. 
Just 
before 
I 
left 
for 
college, 
it 
was discovered that my 
32-year-old soccer coach 
was 
having 
a 
sexual 
relationship 
with 
a 
16-year-old teammate of 
mine. Many people went 
straight to victim blaming 
and asked why she would 
even consider doing that. 
It is extremely important 
to remember this is not her 
fault. Most youth coaches 
are very charismatic and 
develop strong, trusting 
relationships with their 
players. 
This 
situation 
was 
no 
different. 
He 
manipulated 
her 
into 
believing he loved her, 
despite 
the 
outside 
factors that he had a wife 
and was twice her age. As 
I mentioned earlier, this 
is sadly all too familiar 
for many young female 
athletes.
Furthermore, 
many 
female 
athletes 
fear 
getting cut from a team or 
losing playing time if they 
displease a coach. These 
stories and the countless 
others 
like 
them 
are 
“testimony to the culture 
that exists in sport which 
pressures female athletes 
to put up with the sexist 
environment 
and 
gives 
the impression that those 
in positions of authority, 
who have sexual motives, 
have little or no difficulty 
in 
selecting 
vulnerable 
athletes upon whom they 
prey.” The objectification 
of female athletes starts 
at a young age and many 
young, 
talented 
women 

face abuse. This kind of 
sexualization and abuse 
has pervaded the women’s 
sports 
industry 
and, 
tragically, a very large 
number of female athletes 
are 
familiar 
with 
the 
very 
real 
consequences 
it causes. Furthermore, 
this 
male-dominated 
industry 
has 
“not 
yet 
developed effective ways 
of 
handling 
complaints 
and communicating these 
processes to the athletes 
… not only was the process 
a difficult one, but the 
athletes were generally 
unsatisfied 
with 
the 
outcomes.”
The 
men 
running 
these organizations have 
failed to create a safe 
environment for female 
athletes to report their 
abuse. 
This 
indirectly 
perpetuates 
the 
issue 
of 
sexual 
assault 
and 
therefore reinforces the 
inequality 
women 
are 
facing in sports today. 
There need to be programs 
put in place that educate 
female athletes on sexual 
assault. 
They 
need 
to 
know what they can do 
if they find themselves 
in one of these situations 
and they need to be sure 
if 
they 
do 
choose 
to 
come forward, they will 
be treated with respect 
and be believed and the 
process 
will 
be 
just. 
Without these kinds of 
programs, objectification, 
sexualization 
and 
abuse will continue to 
be normalized and the 
inequality will persist.

Hannah Harshe can be reached at 

hharshe@umich.edu.

CONTRIBUTE TO THE CONVERSATION

Readers are encouraged to submit letters 
to the editor and op-eds. Letters should 
be fewer than 300 words while op-eds 
should be 550 to 850 words. Send the 
writer’s full name and University affiliation to 
emmacha@umich.edu

Sexual abuse in women’s sports by Marlee Burridge continued below:
HANNAH HARSHE | COLUMN

“We will go 
about the 
rest of our 
days without 
commiting 
any unspoken 
criminal 
offenses.”

Farid Alsabeh can be reached at 
 

falsabeh@umich.edu.

