Post hoc ergo propter hoc

Having gone back and forth on the topic an infinite number of times, I feel almost like the ending steps of a Maclaurin series finally having reached a suitable topic.

My family is very sports-oriented. My younger brother is a wide receiver at the University of Richmond, the defending D-1AA national champions. My oldest cousin is a scholarship baseball player at Catawba College in North Carolina and is planning on being drafted into the Major Leagues either this draft or the next. My younger cousin was ranked as one of the top ten baseball players in North Carolina for his age when he was 11, 12, 13, and 14. He is now the quarterback of a championship high school in North Carolina. My mother and grandfather run marathons to this day.

I, however, am not so naturally blessed with athletic ability. Although I am not by any means unathletic, although most of my sporting ability comes from having, by threat of ridicule, to play competitively against my brother and cousins in every sport imaginable.

My efforts to be an athlete left me in an untenable position, resulting in a profligate use of time and energy. My area of ability has always been in the classroom through thought, speech, and language. I am admittedly a nerd deep down. I can hide it well sometimes, but it eventually comes out.

I will do my project on my struggle to identify myself, even sometimes to this day, with either the world of academia or athletics. These two are by no means by definition mutually exclusive, but it's funny how it often tends to be.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc:

Roughly translated: "after this, therefore, because of this"

Did I become a fan of the classroom simply by default? Was I pushed into something other than sports when I realized that I could no longer hang with my two-years-junior brother? Interesting to think about.