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.