This entry is written by Carl Ehrlich, a football student-athlete at Harvard. Check out Carl's previous blogs: Playing Under the Lights, Summer Dogs and R.I.C.E.

If I've learned anything at Harvard, it's the ability to multi-task. For example, right now I'm writing a much needed blog entry, rationalizing not having written one in three weeks and feeding into the most clichéd topic about which a Harvard athlete could write - all at the same time! But, clichés are formulated for a reason, and I assure you it's not accidental that all Harvard athletes talk about the shared in-season experience. Which is why I write this entry:

"A Tale of Two Cities; Cambridge and Allston"

The entirety of my experience at Harvard can be summarized by this title. In Cambridge, I've eaten, slept, gone to class (I swear), been mentally beaten by venomous TF's and spent many a late night tearing through materials for an upcoming exam. At the athletic complex across the river in Allston, I've lifted, ran, been physically beaten by ogre-like o-linemen and spent many an early morning getting taped and dressed to be on the field for 6 a.m. spring practices. While the two share common traits like the value of hard work, there remains a voluminous difference between the two. Below is a diary of an in-season day and the shuttle-like transitions between these two worlds.

Today is Tuesday. I wake up at 5:50 in Cambridge, and get out of bed for work-outs. I throw on clothes considerably warmer than I would usually wear at this time of the year in order to compensate for the briskness of the early morning (note change of clothes number one) and to recreate the comfort of my bed. With my mouth nuzzled into the top of my jacket, I walk outside and give a silent head nod to Matt Luft, Tom Hull and Brent Bryant as we climb into my Subaru and head down to lift. While this is technically Cambridge, this part of the day may as well be chalked up to Allston because beyond brushing my teeth, nothing of consequence happens until I am in "Allston mode."

After parking and changing, I'm in the weight room around 6:15 to get ready for the 6:30 lift. Because we are only allotted one hour to lift on Tuesdays, everyone gets down to business and there is no talking of life back across the river in Cambridge. While people talk about their Cambridge lives in the locker room, a lesson learned early on in the program is that when we are in Allston, we need to be here physically and mentally, so our personal lives are put on hold.

At 7:30, we have our team "break down," the concluding event of practice, in which we all repeat the same line on the count of three - something like "Crimson" or "Hair on Fire" - the term breakdown has nothing to do with tissues and childhood trauma - and head to the locker room to shower, dress and travel back across the river.

Having an eight o'clock class, I bolt into the locker room to get a head start on racing through the shower, putting on change of clothes number two, and getting ready for class.

Back at Harvard Yard, the hub of all activities that are Cambridge, I enter a parallel universe where eight o'clock is still considered early. As students trickle into the hallway to get ready for our two-hour tutorial, the only remnants of my morning lift are some Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness and a powerbar that I have to eat in lieu of breakfast.

Class starts in the philosophy tutorial on meta-physics and I am immediately intellectually blind-sided. All this time in the weight room focusing on such fundamental concepts as "dedication" and "diligence" only to find out that abstract entities like this really don't exist!

After class I walk back to my room in Pforzheimer Hall and spend the time in transit catching up on all of the phone calls I inevitably owe my family and friends. One of the biggest lessons of efficiency that I've learned here at Harvard is that if I am sitting down while talking on the phone, I am wasting time. A) I have to walk back to my dorm and B) I always have phone calls that I owe to people so C) I'm an avid supporter of knocking these two proverbial birds out at once. My Dad is so used to this habit of mine that the first thing he'll ask on the phone is "and where are you headed to now?"

Following the phone call, I take a quick nap before heading to my next philosophy class on race and social justice. Turning the material over in my head while walking down to the field house after class, I slowly morph into "Allston mode" and begin to see the applicability of what I just learned in this other realm. I realize that one reason why I am such a proponent of affirmative action is that I am in many ways an affirmative action baby myself, having been admitted partially for football prowess.

In fact, Harvard's most famous alumni were often, in this sense, affirmative action babies - John Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt, for example, were beneficiaries of a special program administered by past Harvard regimes to give opportunities the kids from the ruling class. But I will spare the reader my thoughts on Dworkin's defense of affirmative action. Football is a wonderful thing, I think to myself as I cross the (affirmatively named) JFK Bridge, because race is not an issue on the team - instead, we discriminate by the color of the other person's jersey.

Now once again completely submersed in Allston, I reach my locker around 1:45, I make my third clothing change of the day (the fourth will come while getting ready for practice) and get ready to head into the training room where I'll warm-up and get taped for practice. As I'm doing this, I strike up a conversation with Glen Dorris (he's number 54, I'm number 56, so his locker is next to mine - we've finally gotten those odd number children away from us) about how we thought about time versus how people back in Cambridge viewed it.

At 2:00 in Cambridge, most students have finished their classes and are ready to start their day. At 2:00 in Allston, our day (in the Cambridgean sense of the word) is over. I think one of the strengths of our team's culture is the discipline to travel between these two worlds and not let one carry over and affect our actions in the other. With the exception of a political conversation that broke out during warm-ups (Coach Hall reminded us that the word "subsidy" should never be used on the field), every player is impressively able to leave the world of Cambridge behind them and focus on the upcoming practice.

Training room at 2:00, meetings at 3:00 (mainly watching film and brief install), practice at 4:00, training room again after practice and then the team disperses to our respective houses to sneak in before the 7:30 end of dinner. Tonight, however, I have a 7:00 section for my science class (nanotechnology - let's get small!) so I head from practice right into my fifth clothing change of the day and head off to class.

Following section, I stop by B. Good (a shameless plug for my favorite restaurant in Harvard Square - now open until 2 a.m. Thursday-Saturday) and am back in my dorm by 9:00. After coming back, I'll allow myself a half hour to sit around and space out while I catch up with roommates, but all the time being dually, duly, and dully aware that I have plenty of work to do for the following day.

But even if the in-season schedule seems brutal, it has its advantages. One of the best things about it is that you have a built-in excuse for things that seem frivolous in the rest of your life. Just by shrugging your shoulders and mumbling something about being in-season, we can be excused from an unfathomable number of things.

Haven't cleaned your room? In season! Owe your friends from home a few phone calls? In season! Wearing sweatpants to class four days in a row because you can't find the time to do laundry? In season! No blog for three weeks...well, you get it.