Just a 100… a 100…  a 100. The T appears before my eyes, I flip, boom I’m off the wall. Underwaters. Breakout. Just a 75… a 75…  a 75. This is what goes through my head as I swim. I am completely consumed by the set. In the pool, I am focused on each stroke, each breath, each wall. When I reach the wall at the end of a set it all comes back. I look around, glance at the clock, and watch my coach, waiting for them to start with the next set. While the practice may be tough, it invigorates me, the challenge spurs me forth, pushes me to do more.

The end of the school day always leads to mixed feelings. I am done with school but that doesn’t mean I am completely done for the day. Practice, it is inescapable, and it is what is coming next. I would do anything to just go home. It has been haunting me the whole day, from the moment I awoke this morning to now when I must begin to make my way to the dreaded event. 

One second ago I was fairly warm and completely dry on the deck, but now I am wholly immersed in freezing water. I wish I could be anywhere else, doing anything else, just not practicing. I don’t have time to think about that now though, I have to start warmup. Starting to swim the feelings of dread are washed off of me by the heavily chlorinated water that flows past, and I am once again becoming consumed by the actions of swimming.

This is the cycle of my feelings on swimming. It is not as if I am unaware of the fact that once I begin swimming I will forget about my ill will. No matter how I feel when swimming, I cannot shake the belief that my time would be better spent elsewhere. I have no explanation for this, and it torments me. I quit club swimming because of it, and it continues to sour my swimming career.

This has begged the question, why? Why do I keep with this sport that I have so much resentment for? When in the pool, I weigh pros and cons, every decision I make has at least some consideration put into it. For swimming, I assess whether the time spent is worth the displeasure. While swimming, I consider whether I will be able to make the intervals if I swim a set breaststroke, or if I should be safer and swim it back. Other decisions have their own unique factors that determine the decision made, and each person has differing opinions as to the significance of those factors. This means that my opinion is not always the best for every other person, but sometimes decisions have to be made that pertain to multiple people. How then are those decisions made? This responsibility could be enjoined into one person, such as a coach, to make the decision that best suits the needs of the many, like what meets to attend, and depended on not to use this privilege for their own self gain, such as only attending meets that are convenient for them. Or perhaps that person had some form of power that allowed them to take hold of that responsibility, and while it is still hoped that they will make decisions that are best suited for the many rather than the few, there is no guarantee. Clearly, any such system as described above would need to have some constraints laid upon the decision maker. 

Perhaps, instead of one all powerful administrator, each individual is entrusted to make a decision one way or the other, and after the consideration of every judgment whatever choice has reached a majority is what will take effect. This allows everyone to judge the decision in whatever way they wish and the majority of people will be satisfied with the result, this would allow the team members rather than the coach to choose the meets. However what if there are more than two options? At first thought it seems obvious, repeat the procedure as above but allow people to select whichever of the options they prefer, and the option with the most support is the choice that is made. This however can lead to strange situations, consider the hypothetical that follows. There are three meets from which to choose, two of the meets are quite similar, but the third is very dissimilar. Both of the similar meets are preferred by 33 percent of the team, thus meaning the remaining was preferred by 34 percent of the team. With the current rules of the decision the dissimilar option would be taken, despite the fact that 66 percent of the team prefer meets that were fundamentally different from the meet chosen, and only slightly different from one another. This can be remedied by making only a slight change to the rules, instead of allowing the option that is chosen to simply be the option that got the most votes, instead it has to be an option that has received a majority of the votes. This leads to an issue of no option reaching majority support, as is seen in the previous hypothetical. Well, in that case, the option that was chosen the least will be removed, and those that made that decision will be asked to choose again, this process repeats until one option has reached a majority. So let's change the hypothetical a little bit, one meet was preferred by 32.3 percent of the team, another meet that is very similar was preferred by 32.7 percent, and a meet that is very dissimilar was preferred by 34 percent. In this new scenario, those that preferred the first meet would have to choose again, and because the meets were so similar they all would choose the meet, which would now have 66 percent support, and would then be the option that is moved forward with. This leads to many more people being satisfied with the result because at least they got their second choice and not their last.

This form of decision making runs into some problems. When the group of people grows too large, and the decisions that have to be made are too frequent, then it becomes a burden on the many decision makers. Let's say that the team has grown to such a size that there are multiple meets every week, and there are dozens, even hundreds of members that have to choose. This responsibility could be removed from them and shifted to somewhere else. To a smaller group of decision makers who are able to dedicate their lives just making decisions. A few select teammates who are entrusted to make the correct decision. But this will lead back to the problems with one administrator, so instead there must be large limitations on what decisions could be made by such a council, and additionally, this council must be accountable to the wide populace. With this in mind, the decision making processes that were previously discussed can be employed in order to institute members to this council and make sure the correct decision is made when selecting these representatives. Then this process can be repeated at an interval that is deemed nondisruptive in order to keep accountability.

All of this, however, does not help me with deciding on whether or not I should swim, it is a decision that is too personal so that no one else can ever truly answer it. And so that decision, along with many others, is left up to me, the individual, and the responsibility that I will make the correct decision. For decisions that are not as individual, a process that allows for the consideration of the greatest number of people, without being overly burdensome on those people, would be best.