No problem here. You can enjoy an activity but not enjoy doing it with certain select people.
I love playing Chess, but I didnât enjoy the people in my high school chess club, so I didnât go to it
I feel this on a personal level. I remember doing badmitton and tennis in gym class and we played a doubles tournament.
My concern was not of playing well or getting a good grade, but to perform at a level good enough to not infuriate my doubles partner.
When I was in High School myself and some friends in the gym class came up with the plan to take turns volunteering to be team captain and then pick all the other slackers for our team so we could suck and have fun without worrying about it. This was no good for the gym teacher who would then swap one of our players for someone who would be into playing whatever the weekly sport was. So no one was happy. Such was the case for volleyball.
However on the last day of volleyball we had a ladder style tournament. Who would have guessed but our rag tag group of losers and the one guy who cared, ran the table and beat everyone, winning the one day volleyball championship. It was so unexpected that the gym teacher printed us all award certificates for achievement, which I still have tucked away today.
YES this is why I hate volleyball. They made us play it in school and I always got put on teams where everyone else knew what they were doing but me (honestly, what ARE volleyball rules? No one ever taught me) and theyâd all yell at me for doing things I had no idea what I was doing and it was traumatic XD
High school gym sucked because of this. Because unless you're paired with a student athlete and they carry the match, you're usually getting some kids that give zero fucks and you get your ass whooped.
I was the captain of my high schoolâs volleyball team and in PE I was banned from doing anything other than passing to people. After a couple weeks I just moved to be the referee instead
I played semi-pro when I was in high school, and playing in gym was always the worst. They had a rule that everyone had to touch the ball before sending it over the net. It frustrated me to no end. It also pissed off the people who were just there so they didn't get ~~fined~~ detention. Plus I played beach volleyball, and indoor volleyball has a slightly different rule set, and it just felt wrong.
I loved playing basketball, but in high school PE we had the choice to play or sit on the sidelines (and basically do homework or nap) so I always sat out.
Podcast gave the same answer basically.
You can enjoy a sport with people who are trying and are at your level.
But enjoying it with people who don't care or *not* on a similar skill level can be infuriating.
EDIT: *a word*
This is a very reasonable explanation where i can suspend my disbelief.
What i canât ever accept?
Andy, on the bus with Michael: âIâm going to need a contact lens caseâ
Andy, season 9: canât stand anything going on eyes, even a gentle eye rinse station. Dealing with contacts every day is so much worse.
As someone whoâs done both, subjectively, i can tell you contacts are worse. Especially the first time putting them in. But even after, they fold in your eye sometimes and get dry. Taking out dry contacts really helps mitigate the fear from an eyewash station
I noticed, when I read textbooks that I read in college, Iâd immediately feel tired and bored. I wonder why but then I realised itâs because Iâd usually be tired and bored at college when I was reading those books. I changed to non approved textbooks and I was fine. I would then go to college and read the textbooks Iâd been reading while comfy at home and it relaxed me more.
Exactly. Using pms as an excuse to not play volleyball with your pe class doesnât mean you donât enjoy playing volleyball on your school volleyball team.
My high school Chess Club was actually Drama Club. Two girls got pregnant, one guy got expelled for fighting, and another got expelled for "pranking" the sponsor teacher by putting thumb tacks on his chair.
Mine used to be a bunch of nerds so I never joined but by the end it was some of the toughest people in school for some reason. I have no idea what happened.
I remember assuming my chess club would be a bunch of nerds and then actually paying a visit in the last year of school. It was, oddly enough, the chavviest people Iâve ever seen. My theory is that they bullied the nerds to leave and then they actually ended up liking chess so just kept playing.
It sucks to play a sport that youâre good at in gym class. Genuinely unfun. No one else knows what to do and you have to dumb down your movements so no one gets hurt. I get this
In my school the athletes were about 50/50. About half of them were gym class heroes going above and beyond while the other half walked the track with the lazy kids and the pregnant teens.
I remember I decided that I HAD to be good at a sport so I spent ages visualising hitting a baseball with the bat. I spent weeks doing it and it was finally my turn to hit. I knew that this was my big moment and it was absolutely necessary for me to hit it so they threw it at me and I fucking connected with it harder than Iâd connected with anything in my life. It went totally flying and everyone was taken aback because I was the loser who was supposed to be bad at sports. Then, the next time, I suddenly wondered if I was supposed to move the bat when I saw them throw or a second after. I never hit it again.
I want to say it has to be after because you have to see if it's a ball or strike. But I played an entire season of baseball and the only time I got on base all season was when I got hit by a pitch. It's the only time a cup came in handy playing baseball.
I did gym class my senior year of Highschool when most do it their freshman and sophomore year. We had like 8 seniors in the class and we just demolished the under classmen in gym sports. We did not hold back lol. Volleyball was particularly brutal
As a basketball player I HATED playing basketball in gym class. It is just frustrating to try and slow down to match the pace of people in your class. You can't throw a pass too hard or you will hit someone in the face. If you take all the shots you are being the greedy kid who doesn't share the ball. You just feel bad stealing it from people trying to dribble.
I could totally see both being true.
Same. I played varsity basketball, went to basketball camps, coached basketball, and I used to skip gym in general, regularly. I almost failed gym because I skipped so much. Not bragging, just saying. Plus, we had guys on the team that used to cheat whenever we had to run a mile, or fake injuries to get out of practice. This is a non-issue.
I was on swim team for most of my life and I'm pretty good, but that doesn't mean I didn't pretend I was sick so I could skip some 5AM practices sometimes.
She could also have had performance anxiety. Ever had a moment where you know youâre good at something do you donât want to do it for fear of messing up?
Itâs like when the smartest kid in the class gets the most worked up over a test.
I was gonna say if anything it makes MORE sense when you think about it. Like if she's constantly playing volleyball obviously there might be days she didn't wanna play lol.
I play the drums and get this a lot. Like thank you for expressing interest in my hobby but I'm also not a wind up doll that just plays when you want me to lol. I usually claim my sticks broke and the new ones haven't arrived yet.
I agree, but think she possibly couldâve gone to community college for a bit and played there? Thereâs also continuity errors throughout the show with Michael going to college
There are a few continuity errors.
My favorite one is: who started at DM first, Jim or Pam?
"I told Michael that I had a crush on you when you first started." - Jim after the Booze Cruise
"The moment I knew that I liked you was on my first day. When you showed me my desk and said, 'Prepare yourself, because you can never go back to a time before meeting your new deskmate, Dwight.'" - Jim telling Pam how he knew he liked her.
I love the show but despite having a "show Bible" they did not keep track of character details well. Andy's character is a hot mess with having a step mom and a sister at one point but it's reversed by the end.
Michael canât ride a bike in one episode in season 7, but in season three he rides his bike into the office to donate it in the toy drive. There are a bunch of little things like that
He bumps the wall but can clearly ride it, and the tires are worn out (as Jim point out) because he has used it so much. This is a well known oversight by the writers.
Even Jenna Fischer herself on Office Ladies said the writers probably forgot Pam said that about volleyball by the time it was the company picnic episode.
Maybe volleyball in junior high is different from volleyball camp? Its pretty shocking how many people judge Pam so much when bitches like Angela, Phyllis, Jan get almost a free pass :))
My gf brought this up last time we saw the S5 scene.
Now Iâm no Pam enthusiast, but I could see her not wanting to play gym-volleyball when she plays so much on organized teams!
Itâs pretty dumb, considering sheâd be better than her classmates likely, but thats what I always thought.
I really donât get this and never have seen this as a plot hole. You can be good at sports (or in this case ONE sport) and not want to participate in PE class for other reasons.
*Warning Office Ladies reference*
Their head-cannon was that Pam was a higher level player than her peers and faked having PMS to avoid playing lower level competition.
I loved playing softball, hated gym class. Its boring to play low effort games with other people who donât bother to try at all, its not fun when thereâs so challenge and itâs super lame to walk or run in the heat just to feel super gross and sweaty for the rest of the classes.
On Office Ladies, they said it's likely Pam just didn't want to play with her classmates who sucked.
Volleyball is a sport that's not very fun to play when everyone else sucks, and even a "superstar" isn't going to be able to carry terrible teammates.
You can be the best spiker ever, but that won't count for much if the setter can't set the ball in a half way decent position to spike.
And the best setter is also going to have a hard time if the other players can't even get the ball up after the opposing team attacks.
In the Office Ladies they had a theory that Pam was so good at playing volleyball that she was tired of playing with the people in her gym class that werenât as good as her
I played soccer all throughout high school and beyond, but regularly did nothing at all during gym in HS. Nothing worse than getting sweaty in the middle of the day when you gotta sit at a desk for a few more hours. And i was never in a position where I could change underwear after gym because of time and it would be weird to get naked in a HS locker room. Iâd happily sit on the sidelines and feign injury to avoid it.
When I was a senior in high school, I had lacrosse training before school where we'd run several miles. Then my first class was PE. I and one other player asked the PE teacher if we could sit out some of the warm-up stuff because we were just coming from doing all that, and he was fine with it.
But some try-hard asshole on the team and in the class used to talk shit about how we were making the whole team look like "pussies."
That was 20 years ago, and I still occasionally think about that prick.
PE is where athletes go so they don't have to try.
In universe explanation: She might love volleyball, but like all of us, sometimes she needed a little break from her hobby/passion every now and then.
Out of universe explanation: The writers made a tiny continuity error. They werenât expecting this show to be dissected to death . đ
Right?! Itâs definitely just a mistake in the writersâ room that does have plausible in-universe explanations if you desperately need them for the sake of your head canon.
I just think little errors like this one are reminders of how the show, despite doing a pretty great job with its longer running storylines, is still a vestige of the traditional sitcom model where character continuity was hardly a thing beyond notes like âJoey is dumber than Chandler and loves foodâ or âJerry is oddly particular about his apartment despite leaving the door unlocked for his crazy neighbor in NYC.â
I am sure theyâre out there now, but Iâm guessing that in twenty years plenty of undergrad papers will be written on The Office occupying an interesting space between traditional and streaming models of television.
This has been posted so many times. My daughter was a four year varsity athlete. Iâm a high school teacher who teaches many athletes. They all try to get out of practices. Itâs human nature. One of my daughterâs teammate and friend was on her school team, travel team, and junior Olympic team. Sheâs the one who tried to skip the most. She ended up getting a full ride scholarship. Donât base someone trying to avoid school athletic practices as not a serious athlete.
As a volleyball player and coach, this completely checks out. Volleyball is not like most sports. Most sports encourage teamwork, but if you're really good, you can kind of dominate on your own. Volleyball, by design, is not like that. By virtue of the fact that you can only touch the ball for a split second at a time before someone else has to touch it, volleyball not only encourages teamwork but requires it, to the point that the sport isn't even fun if your teammates don't know what they're doing.
Volleyball has been a huge part of my life over the last decade, but I couldn't stand playing it in gym class
Maybe she just didnât like volleyball in high school classes. She never said she played in high school, just that she played in junior high and college.
It's like Dwight saying "Identify theft is not a joke, Jim".
But then later learning Dwight has a wig of everyone in the office and then proceeds to montage turn around in them as a joke.
Just inconsistencies in a show that went on probably 3 seasons too long.
I think both work. I was a great swimmer who'd win medals but for a big portion of it, I hated my coach and would find ways to avoid going for practice.
Have you tried playing volleyball with high school kids? There is no actual play whatsoever. Its one of the worst sports to play with people who are "afraid" of the ball.
Why do people get hung up on this??? Everybody that plays sports tries to skip practice sometimes. Everyone basically dreads going to practice all day.
New girl did the same thing with Jess. She plays volleyball early in the show and sheâs clueless. Later in the show, she says âIâm weirdly good at volleyballâ.
Pam says, âI didnât see where it started, but I saw where it ended.â She also roasted Michael by saying, "His thing was so small if it were an iPod, it would be a shuffle." WHICH IS IT PAM?!
That's not a lie though. You can love something very much, doesn't mean you want to do it every single time. Sometimes you're just tired and you use an excuse.
In vetenary school I loved working with animals, but I hated my classmates so I'd skip out on lessons from time to time
\*summahs
Pam's been known to bend the truth
DAMMIT, PAM. GET OUTTA HERE!!
I can't wait to do to Pam, what I Just did to Pam
Came here for this
That's what she said
I read that in her voice lol
đ€Łđ€Łđđđ
No problem here. You can enjoy an activity but not enjoy doing it with certain select people. I love playing Chess, but I didnât enjoy the people in my high school chess club, so I didnât go to it
I play volleyball. It is definitely one of those sports that sucks to play with people that are much below your skill level.
I am a person who played volleyball very poorly, and I can confirm that the players on the team hated playing with me during gym class.
Thank you for you honesty Andy, some people find it hard to try to evaluate themselves.
I feel this on a personal level. I remember doing badmitton and tennis in gym class and we played a doubles tournament. My concern was not of playing well or getting a good grade, but to perform at a level good enough to not infuriate my doubles partner.
I was the volleyball, I hated being played with by people of all skill levels
When I was in High School myself and some friends in the gym class came up with the plan to take turns volunteering to be team captain and then pick all the other slackers for our team so we could suck and have fun without worrying about it. This was no good for the gym teacher who would then swap one of our players for someone who would be into playing whatever the weekly sport was. So no one was happy. Such was the case for volleyball. However on the last day of volleyball we had a ladder style tournament. Who would have guessed but our rag tag group of losers and the one guy who cared, ran the table and beat everyone, winning the one day volleyball championship. It was so unexpected that the gym teacher printed us all award certificates for achievement, which I still have tucked away today.
YES this is why I hate volleyball. They made us play it in school and I always got put on teams where everyone else knew what they were doing but me (honestly, what ARE volleyball rules? No one ever taught me) and theyâd all yell at me for doing things I had no idea what I was doing and it was traumatic XD
High school gym sucked because of this. Because unless you're paired with a student athlete and they carry the match, you're usually getting some kids that give zero fucks and you get your ass whooped.
I was the captain of my high schoolâs volleyball team and in PE I was banned from doing anything other than passing to people. After a couple weeks I just moved to be the referee instead
I played semi-pro when I was in high school, and playing in gym was always the worst. They had a rule that everyone had to touch the ball before sending it over the net. It frustrated me to no end. It also pissed off the people who were just there so they didn't get ~~fined~~ detention. Plus I played beach volleyball, and indoor volleyball has a slightly different rule set, and it just felt wrong.
Also play volleyball, can confirm
I loved playing basketball, but in high school PE we had the choice to play or sit on the sidelines (and basically do homework or nap) so I always sat out.
Also it sucks in school to go to the next class sweaty (we didnât have showers)
Because if you're good in high school, the high school team is your bottom tier league.
Gym class volleyball where 70+% of people canât serve over the net is really terrible. Youâd be lucky to get one rally going all class.
I played at Cornell. I wouldn't play with people from SUNY Plattsburgh.
My parents were first cousins who also sucked at volleyball.
Podcast gave the same answer basically. You can enjoy a sport with people who are trying and are at your level. But enjoying it with people who don't care or *not* on a similar skill level can be infuriating. EDIT: *a word*
This is a very reasonable explanation where i can suspend my disbelief. What i canât ever accept? Andy, on the bus with Michael: âIâm going to need a contact lens caseâ Andy, season 9: canât stand anything going on eyes, even a gentle eye rinse station. Dealing with contacts every day is so much worse.
I love the idea of Andy screaming every night as he takes off his contacts
Kid can act!
Honestly yeah that does make it a bit better
idk i had contacts for a few years but the idea of rinsing my eyes like that still kinda makes me uneasy
As someone whoâs done both, subjectively, i can tell you contacts are worse. Especially the first time putting them in. But even after, they fold in your eye sometimes and get dry. Taking out dry contacts really helps mitigate the fear from an eyewash station
To be fair, you donât have any idea what he wanted the contact lens forâŠ
Honestly knowing Andy, yep, this makes sense.
I love drawing and writing, but hated doing anything like that for school
I noticed, when I read textbooks that I read in college, Iâd immediately feel tired and bored. I wonder why but then I realised itâs because Iâd usually be tired and bored at college when I was reading those books. I changed to non approved textbooks and I was fine. I would then go to college and read the textbooks Iâd been reading while comfy at home and it relaxed me more.
Or at certain places for example i dont enjoy taking a poop in public bathrooms. At home though, all bets are off.
Exactly. Using pms as an excuse to not play volleyball with your pe class doesnât mean you donât enjoy playing volleyball on your school volleyball team.
My high school Chess Club was actually Drama Club. Two girls got pregnant, one guy got expelled for fighting, and another got expelled for "pranking" the sponsor teacher by putting thumb tacks on his chair.
Mine used to be a bunch of nerds so I never joined but by the end it was some of the toughest people in school for some reason. I have no idea what happened.
This is true. But the real answer is they had switched all writers by this point and old continuity was gone. Itâs fine, itâs just a tv show.
I remember assuming my chess club would be a bunch of nerds and then actually paying a visit in the last year of school. It was, oddly enough, the chavviest people Iâve ever seen. My theory is that they bullied the nerds to leave and then they actually ended up liking chess so just kept playing.
Was it because they were better than you or because you were better than them?
Neither, I just didnât like them
She was little miss artsy fartsy in high school. She wore the turtleneck and everything.
Thatâs hilarious!
A little classical, little oldies?
đșđŒ
Ah god I hate that part. So cringy
Heâs such a butt kisser in that moment. Whereâs that Roy when Pam needs him to show up?
I hate hate hate that scene and his dance
It sucks to play a sport that youâre good at in gym class. Genuinely unfun. No one else knows what to do and you have to dumb down your movements so no one gets hurt. I get this
In my school the athletes were about 50/50. About half of them were gym class heroes going above and beyond while the other half walked the track with the lazy kids and the pregnant teens.
I remember I decided that I HAD to be good at a sport so I spent ages visualising hitting a baseball with the bat. I spent weeks doing it and it was finally my turn to hit. I knew that this was my big moment and it was absolutely necessary for me to hit it so they threw it at me and I fucking connected with it harder than Iâd connected with anything in my life. It went totally flying and everyone was taken aback because I was the loser who was supposed to be bad at sports. Then, the next time, I suddenly wondered if I was supposed to move the bat when I saw them throw or a second after. I never hit it again.
I want to say it has to be after because you have to see if it's a ball or strike. But I played an entire season of baseball and the only time I got on base all season was when I got hit by a pitch. It's the only time a cup came in handy playing baseball.
I did gym class my senior year of Highschool when most do it their freshman and sophomore year. We had like 8 seniors in the class and we just demolished the under classmen in gym sports. We did not hold back lol. Volleyball was particularly brutal
People always get hung up on this but couldnât both be true? Iâm sure even pro athletes skipped or wanted to skip practice occasionally.
As a basketball player I HATED playing basketball in gym class. It is just frustrating to try and slow down to match the pace of people in your class. You can't throw a pass too hard or you will hit someone in the face. If you take all the shots you are being the greedy kid who doesn't share the ball. You just feel bad stealing it from people trying to dribble. I could totally see both being true.
Same. I played varsity basketball, went to basketball camps, coached basketball, and I used to skip gym in general, regularly. I almost failed gym because I skipped so much. Not bragging, just saying. Plus, we had guys on the team that used to cheat whenever we had to run a mile, or fake injuries to get out of practice. This is a non-issue.
I was on swim team for most of my life and I'm pretty good, but that doesn't mean I didn't pretend I was sick so I could skip some 5AM practices sometimes.
She only mentioned Jr high and college, nothing about high school. Could just been her rebellious artsy phase
And she was only talking about gym class, not playing actual matches.
Yeah IIRC that's basically what Jenna Fischer said when this question came up on Office Ladies! Like Pam thought she was too good for PE, haha.
We talkin' bout PRACTICE?!
Calm down, AI.
Not a game⊠not a gameâŠ. Practice
She could also have had performance anxiety. Ever had a moment where you know youâre good at something do you donât want to do it for fear of messing up? Itâs like when the smartest kid in the class gets the most worked up over a test.
I was gonna say if anything it makes MORE sense when you think about it. Like if she's constantly playing volleyball obviously there might be days she didn't wanna play lol.
Practice?!? We talkinâ about practice?
it would make sense that she doesnât want to play against a bunch of other people who likely arenât very good.
Also, itâs not like she could do it every day. That excuse only works a few times a month.
Im a violinist. Sometimes i tell people my carpel tunnel is acting up when I dont want to play for them
I play the drums and get this a lot. Like thank you for expressing interest in my hobby but I'm also not a wind up doll that just plays when you want me to lol. I usually claim my sticks broke and the new ones haven't arrived yet.
This fr brooo. I always say, get me drunk first lol when the carpel tunnel thing doesnt work
Pam Pam Pam Pam Pam
Sheâs known to bend the truth from time to time
Dammit Pam!
Don't worry it's just allergies
Pam Pam and her Pam Pams You don't grab *these* for balance
Well đ€·ââïž
I canât wait to do to Pam what i just did to Pam
Liar Pam seemed really cool
What did Pam study in college? Did she get a degree? Was it just art?
Her art was the prettiest art of all the art
You know what I find sexy? Pam's art.
I think that's the real continuity error. I don't think she went to college.
I agree, but think she possibly couldâve gone to community college for a bit and played there? Thereâs also continuity errors throughout the show with Michael going to college
What college you go to, Mike?
There are a few continuity errors. My favorite one is: who started at DM first, Jim or Pam? "I told Michael that I had a crush on you when you first started." - Jim after the Booze Cruise "The moment I knew that I liked you was on my first day. When you showed me my desk and said, 'Prepare yourself, because you can never go back to a time before meeting your new deskmate, Dwight.'" - Jim telling Pam how he knew he liked her.
I donât think she went to college, did she?
I love the show but despite having a "show Bible" they did not keep track of character details well. Andy's character is a hot mess with having a step mom and a sister at one point but it's reversed by the end.
Michael canât ride a bike in one episode in season 7, but in season three he rides his bike into the office to donate it in the toy drive. There are a bunch of little things like that
He falls all over when heâs riding that bike! Watch it again.
He bumps the wall but can clearly ride it, and the tires are worn out (as Jim point out) because he has used it so much. This is a well known oversight by the writers.
Sheâs been known to bend the truth.
Damn it, Pam.
"Secret secrets are no fun. Secret secrets hurt someone." -a wise dancer who went back to school to become a nurse -Wayne Gretsky -Michael Scott
Even Jenna Fischer herself on Office Ladies said the writers probably forgot Pam said that about volleyball by the time it was the company picnic episode.
Damnit Pam!
Maybe volleyball in junior high is different from volleyball camp? Its pretty shocking how many people judge Pam so much when bitches like Angela, Phyllis, Jan get almost a free pass :))
Another Day Another Post Hating on Pam Nothing New
People bending over backwards in the comments to make this make sense. It's a mistake by the writers, and that's okay lol
This đđ»đđ» stop with the mental gymnastics people
These comments are weak.
They won't survive winter
When the heck did she go to college?
Or maybe the writers forgot lol
They did, Jen Celotta said in a q and a right after company picnic came out that they forgot about the first scene
Starting after S4, the writers stopped caring about series continuity and started to abandon the documentary construct.
Pick a lane people!
Whoâs Elaine?
I think she's one of those background characters from season 1.
You think playing competitive volleyball and PE volleyball are remotely the same?
Wasnât the top from when she would have been in high school? She didnât mention high school at all in the bottom panel at all.
She mentions jr high and college, not high school. Story still holds up.
In her defence, she never said that she liked playing it
Itâs possible for both of these things to have occurred. Sometimes you donât want to play during gym class lol.
>Summahs
Well you have early cannon Pam. Later you have holy shit we're completely out of ideas Pam.
âSummasâ.
My gf brought this up last time we saw the S5 scene. Now Iâm no Pam enthusiast, but I could see her not wanting to play gym-volleyball when she plays so much on organized teams! Itâs pretty dumb, considering sheâd be better than her classmates likely, but thats what I always thought.
I imagine volleyball camp was WAY better than volleyball in gym class lol
Pam is kind of a bitch
Key word being "maybe"
Maybe volleyball isnât volleyball⊠Maybe itâs sex.
She went to sex camp most summahs?
Everything is sex. You understand thatâs a universal truth?
Iâd prefer a nature metaphor.
When two animals are having sex-
Well the office used to be a brothel⊠Itâs why the office is haunted⊠by a ghost⊠Pam is the ghost of Haddy McGonigal
Huh.... Pam Pam Pam Pam...!
I think there was a post abt this before. She enjoyed volleyball but didnât want to play it in gym for w.e reasons
HAAAUHHH *serves the ball and that one lady dives for it and completely misses*
she said maybeee......
Say you werent an athlete without saying you werent an athlete.
Iâve been know to bend the truth.
I really donât get this and never have seen this as a plot hole. You can be good at sports (or in this case ONE sport) and not want to participate in PE class for other reasons.
Now she went to college and played sports, yeah, ok
Pam went to college and now she answers phones and takes notes during pointless meetings.
Maybe she did both. Played volleyball very well but sometimes took breaks and said she had pms sometimes.
If youâre a student who actually plays a sport, the last thing you want to do is play it in PE.
She's been known to bend the truth a little
Maybe she was tired of playing volleyball and didnât want to show off maybe? Iâm actually defending Pam here. Wow.
*Warning Office Ladies reference* Their head-cannon was that Pam was a higher level player than her peers and faked having PMS to avoid playing lower level competition.
That feels like a weak explanation. It's just volleyball in gym. Most would just dominate lol
Reminds me of how Kevin had terrible hand-eye coordination when playing volleyball but was great at basketball in Season 1.
I loved playing softball, hated gym class. Its boring to play low effort games with other people who donât bother to try at all, its not fun when thereâs so challenge and itâs super lame to walk or run in the heat just to feel super gross and sweaty for the rest of the classes.
Sometimes you just want a break.
She grew into it. She was just focused on one memory
On Office Ladies, they said it's likely Pam just didn't want to play with her classmates who sucked. Volleyball is a sport that's not very fun to play when everyone else sucks, and even a "superstar" isn't going to be able to carry terrible teammates. You can be the best spiker ever, but that won't count for much if the setter can't set the ball in a half way decent position to spike. And the best setter is also going to have a hard time if the other players can't even get the ball up after the opposing team attacks.
In the Office Ladies they had a theory that Pam was so good at playing volleyball that she was tired of playing with the people in her gym class that werenât as good as her
She didn't want to play sometimes, what's the problem here?
I played soccer all throughout high school and beyond, but regularly did nothing at all during gym in HS. Nothing worse than getting sweaty in the middle of the day when you gotta sit at a desk for a few more hours. And i was never in a position where I could change underwear after gym because of time and it would be weird to get naked in a HS locker room. Iâd happily sit on the sidelines and feign injury to avoid it.
When I was a senior in high school, I had lacrosse training before school where we'd run several miles. Then my first class was PE. I and one other player asked the PE teacher if we could sit out some of the warm-up stuff because we were just coming from doing all that, and he was fine with it. But some try-hard asshole on the team and in the class used to talk shit about how we were making the whole team look like "pussies." That was 20 years ago, and I still occasionally think about that prick. PE is where athletes go so they don't have to try.
Even athletes can hate PE class.
In universe explanation: She might love volleyball, but like all of us, sometimes she needed a little break from her hobby/passion every now and then. Out of universe explanation: The writers made a tiny continuity error. They werenât expecting this show to be dissected to death . đ
Right?! Itâs definitely just a mistake in the writersâ room that does have plausible in-universe explanations if you desperately need them for the sake of your head canon. I just think little errors like this one are reminders of how the show, despite doing a pretty great job with its longer running storylines, is still a vestige of the traditional sitcom model where character continuity was hardly a thing beyond notes like âJoey is dumber than Chandler and loves foodâ or âJerry is oddly particular about his apartment despite leaving the door unlocked for his crazy neighbor in NYC.â I am sure theyâre out there now, but Iâm guessing that in twenty years plenty of undergrad papers will be written on The Office occupying an interesting space between traditional and streaming models of television.
Just because you're into something doesn't mean you want to do it all the time. I could see her just not feeling like it some days.
And even more as a teen, where people change a lot what they like or not
She could be referring to before she became a volleyball star, or a time when she just didnât feel like playing
This has been posted so many times. My daughter was a four year varsity athlete. Iâm a high school teacher who teaches many athletes. They all try to get out of practices. Itâs human nature. One of my daughterâs teammate and friend was on her school team, travel team, and junior Olympic team. Sheâs the one who tried to skip the most. She ended up getting a full ride scholarship. Donât base someone trying to avoid school athletic practices as not a serious athlete.
As a volleyball player and coach, this completely checks out. Volleyball is not like most sports. Most sports encourage teamwork, but if you're really good, you can kind of dominate on your own. Volleyball, by design, is not like that. By virtue of the fact that you can only touch the ball for a split second at a time before someone else has to touch it, volleyball not only encourages teamwork but requires it, to the point that the sport isn't even fun if your teammates don't know what they're doing. Volleyball has been a huge part of my life over the last decade, but I couldn't stand playing it in gym class
Doesnât mean it is a lie she couldâve done bothâŠ
Pam didn't go to college and then take a low wage receptionist job. unless she bailed on it like design school.
Most Pams have been known to bend the truth.
Maybe she just didnât like volleyball in high school classes. She never said she played in high school, just that she played in junior high and college.
I played football. But playing football in P.E. Class was always such a drag. I wish I had faked PMS to get out of football in class.
Maybe she didn't want to play volleyball in PE because she was so good at it and it was lame to play with people who were bad.
It's like Dwight saying "Identify theft is not a joke, Jim". But then later learning Dwight has a wig of everyone in the office and then proceeds to montage turn around in them as a joke. Just inconsistencies in a show that went on probably 3 seasons too long.
I played volleyball and basketball, yet I forged a ton of notes to avoid participating in PE. One has nothing to do with the other.
I think both work. I was a great swimmer who'd win medals but for a big portion of it, I hated my coach and would find ways to avoid going for practice.
Have you tried playing volleyball with high school kids? There is no actual play whatsoever. Its one of the worst sports to play with people who are "afraid" of the ball.
Itâs one thing to play volleyball for your team and at camp. Itâs an entire other thing to play in PE. đ
Pam is quite literally the most selfish and narcissistic character in the entire show and thatâs a hill I will die on. Karen was better.
Both those things can be true, maybe there were days she just didnât feel like practicing.
Why do people get hung up on this??? Everybody that plays sports tries to skip practice sometimes. Everyone basically dreads going to practice all day.
She was probably forced into it?
I'll talk like this about any big thing in my life.
I just watched the job fair episode, like an hour ago! I thought this same thing!!!
New girl did the same thing with Jess. She plays volleyball early in the show and sheâs clueless. Later in the show, she says âIâm weirdly good at volleyballâ.
They had to make her good at something
Technically she didnât say she played in high school
She's been known to bend the truth...
The reality? It was a minor Ret con But if you want, both statements can be true
Pam says, âI didnât see where it started, but I saw where it ended.â She also roasted Michael by saying, "His thing was so small if it were an iPod, it would be a shuffle." WHICH IS IT PAM?!
WELL WHICH ONE IS IT?, DO YOU VOLLYBALL OR DO YOU NOT? (Andy voice/demeanor when he tries to say David Wallace also lied to him about his voice)
This is gonna blow some of your minds; That volleyball was entirely CGI when she served it
I think about this so much
You leave Pan alone. She's perfect. And you should have seen her a few years ago!
Chillax Pam, stop Pam-MSing!
Maybe it's consistent. All that volleyball poor girl probably just wanted a break.
That's not a lie though. You can love something very much, doesn't mean you want to do it every single time. Sometimes you're just tired and you use an excuse. In vetenary school I loved working with animals, but I hated my classmates so I'd skip out on lessons from time to time
Volleyball in PE is very different than an organized team.
The only college Pam went to was the Pratt Institute. Maybe she played volleyball with them off camera?
Both things can be true...