What's in a Beard?

Being a die-hard Chicago Cubs fan I was so excited for the Major League Baseball Playoffs to begin. The Cubs had successfully navigated there way through the regular season winning their division title on route to the best record in the entire National League. This year was going to be our year! The year that the Cubs brought home a World Series Title after making there devoted fans wait 100 years exactly! Having the best record in the National League meant that the Cubs would face the lowly Los Angeles Dodgers who had snuck their way into the playoffs by default after barely finishing over 500 and still being the "best" team in their division. Winning their first round series against the Dodgers should have been a breeze for the Cubs! In fact I remember seeing a poll of 7 baseball analysts in ESPN.com and every single one of them had the Cubs winning the series!

But after the Cubs dropped the first two games in their best of 5 series, I could see that they needed a little bit of Brad Zentgraf intervention. Therefore, I did the only thing I could do to help the team. I declared that I would NOT shave until the Cubs won against the Dodgers! "Playoff-Beards" are actually quite common among pro athletes, especially when it comes to baseball and hockey players. And I set out to show my support for my team in the only way I could think of! Unfortunately for me, the Cubs didn’t get the memo about my added support and went on to lose Game 3 effectively eliminating them from the playoffs and dashing every Cubs’ fan’s hopes of seeing a World Series Title brought back to Wrigley.

I then came to a cross-roads of sorts. While I had just the previous day claimed to never shave until the Cubs won a World Series, I was now faced with the terrible realization that this event would not happen for ATLEAST one full year! And even though I would have to eventually renege on my original purpose in not shaving, I didn’t want to let a perfectly good "Playoff-Beard" go to waste! And so I did the next most logical thing…coming in a close second place in popularity to the "Playoff-Beard" is another phenomenon that sweeps the nation on most every college campus this time of year, and that is the "Mid-Term-Beard".

It’s been almost two weeks now and my Mid-terms have come to a close. And with the end of my Mid-Terms comes the end of my "Mid-Term Beard" and all of the gloriousness that goes with it! I’ll be sad to see it go, but it’s for the best. It does look pretty gross! Haha Today I got my first Mid-Term score back in my Biomechanics Class…98%. I guess you can’t mess with results?! I hope my "Finals-Beard" will be as successful! :)