Sophomore Misses Pottruck, Won't Exercise Now Because Gym Is Too Far

You don’t know what you have until it’s gone. During the school year, you get your daily greens from the guy whose contact in your phone is just a leaf emoji. You think your weekly fitness quota is complete after a night of sweating out your vodka Red Bulls on an elevated surface.

While walking on Walnut between 37^th and 38^th, you glance between Pottruck and Huntsman, forced to choose the lesser of two evils. But instead, you go for a carb-loading, equally sweaty night at Honeygrow.

We spoke to Michael Whitman (W ’20), who shared that he regrets his freshman-year choices now that he's home. Talk about summertime sadness!

“I mean, yeah, I was kind of an all-state lacrosse star in high school. Voted MIP three years in a row. When I came to Penn, thought, I was like, ‘School. Booze. Chicks. School. Booze Chicks. Booze.’ So I think I went to Pottruck twice, maybe thrice. Once was to try the chocolate peanut butter smoothie, which ended up tasting like a sad powdery Tootsie Roll, and the other was to get a free chair massage. Surprisingly refreshing, may I add.”

After rambling on about the short-term and long-term benefits of his chair massage, Whitman continued.

“From what I’ve heard, Pottruck has some high quality machines, a few super heavy weights, and semi-functioning Purell dispensers, which is pretty cool. And all of that was a three-minute walk from my place in the Quad... Now that I’m home for the summer, the nearest gym is, like, a 10-minute drive away. Sure, my physical and mental health may be worth a 3-minute walk, but it’s sure as hell not worth a 10-minute drive. You’re telling me I gotta get in a car to go flail my limbs around for 60 minutes? And then not get the knots gently kneaded out of me afterwards? Yeah, okay.”

Whitman told UTB he’s planning on more frequent Pottruck trips in the fall. But he also told us he’s going to do all of his readings on time. So we’ll see about that.