Before I joined NYU Abu Dhabi, I had never stepped foot inside a gym. Call me crazy, but I just didn't feel the need to do push-ups, run around in circles or pick up heavy things. In fact, I’ve always resisted health with a certain vengeance. Destroying my body comes naturally to me, and I like to think of it as a form of internalized rebellion. “The enemy is the inner me,” I say to myself as I shun diet coke and drink ordinary coke instead.

In short, I like being a couch potato — mainly because it has the word potato in it, which is incidentally my favorite vegetable.

But then came NYUAD's mandatory physical education requirement.

I enrolled in the Speed and Agility class this fall, and I think I can safely describe it as a journey of discovery. Not only did the pain and muscle cramps help me discover parts of my body I never knew existed, but my knowledge of human anatomy expanded vastly. No longer was I a plebe who said, “My legs hurt.” I was now Supriya Kamath, Speed and Agility pro, who said things like, “There is a veritable boo-boo in my iliotibial tract.”

Another important thing that I discovered as a result of my foray into the art of running around was this: NYUAD has a lot of gyms. There are gyms everywhere. A regular gym. A performance gym. A women’s gym. A gym that teaches Introduction to Creative Writing. It’s crazy.

It took me a while to understand why the university needed so many gyms, but the answer hit me one day as I was trudging back to my suite after P.E., dragging myself up the Campus Center stairs. My epiphany was this: the gyms, and the mandatory P.E. requirements, are mere distractions. They are nothing but tiny cogs in a much larger wheel of what I like to refer to as Enforced Health, a.k.a. Institutional Mothering. This university is forcing us to exercise.

Take stairs, for example. They’re everywhere. I spend at least four hours a day climbing up stuff, and even more time trying to catch my breath after climbing up said stuff. The stairs around campus should have their own pit stops, with people in white t-shirts who hand out water bottles and glucose, cheering me on with free aromatic massages. Sometimes, the only way I can inspire myself to climb is to pretend that I’m a mountain goat.

The stairs inside the Campus Center are particularly taxing. I live in constant dread that I will someday fall through the giant holes between the steps. I’m nowhere near slim enough for that to happen, of course, but maybe if I climb enough stairs, someday I will be. And when that happens I’ll fall through the gaps and land in our Olympic-sized pool when it's in the middle of an Aqua Zumba lesson, which would be horrible because I can’t dance. Or swim, for that matter. And my clothes would be all soggy. Clearly, we are being subliminally encouraged to use the more physically-challenging stairs outside Campus Center.

NYUAD’s pre-emptive strike against the Freshman 15 manifests itself in several other seemingly unintentional ways. The reason why the Arts Center is basically Ski Dubai is also the reason why Inuits have 50 words for snow but no words for fat (probably): low temperature equals high metabolic activity. I’m not entirely sure why the Arts Center is the locus of this unprecedented attack on body mass, but if you rearrange the letters of Arts Center and throw in an “I," you get Arctic Center, so at this point, we can only deduce that one of the members of the Facilities team belongs to the Illuminati.

On the topic of Illuminati — don’t tell me the recurrent activation of the fire alarm isn’t engineered by some all-powerful entity that wants us to exercise. There is something heartwarming about communal panic, and as we all run out of the building in terror, I am reminded fondly of the Spanish Tomatina festival, but with Public Safety instead of tomatoes. We really should call it the Saadiyat Weekly Marathon.

Finally, a discussion about enforced health would be incomplete without any mention of food. I have been told, on multiple occasions and by several different people, that I simply must try the Double Trouble smoothie at the Goodness Me counter in the Marketplace. This was during pre-Pumpkin Spice Latte times, so it was a big deal, and I had huge expectations. However, the first time I went to get one, I was told that it was unavailable due to a paucity of Oreos.

Obviously the smoothie was popular, so I was forgiving. But the second time I went, the same thing happened. “No Oreos,” the guy said, shaking his head. At this point, I’d become impatient. Third time’s the charm, I told myself before I went back the next day.

This time I saw Oreos on the shelf. “Double Trouble, please,” I whispered, my voice quivering in anticipation. The guy stared at me, sensing my desperation. He glanced at the Oreos on the shelf, glanced back at me and said, unflinchingly, “No vanilla ice cream.” In his eyes, I could distinctly read the word, “lol.”

Clearly, he was a spy, forbidden by NYUAD to serve me a chocolate smoothie due to my wanton disregard for healthy eating habits.

In conclusion, the mandatory P.E. requirement isn’t the only mandatory P.E. requirement. They’re making you exercise, and you don’t even know it. You are nothing but a pawn in this vast network of fitness and health, a victim of a grand conspiracy to keep you in top shape. Athletics Department, I’m onto you.

P.S. If you are interested in supporting the rights of Lazy People Everywhere, please join my up-and-coming Student Interest Group, Lazies First. I’ll get around to creating it eventually. Maybe.