Florida's schoolchildren typically score near the bottom of the nation in standardized tests, something easily explained by the fact that we were way too busy with swimming lessons to be bothered with schoolwork. While kids in non-swimming states (like Vermont and Manitoba) were studying things like addition and grammar, we were being hurled into pools by embittered old women from up North who assured us that the Dead Man's Float is the answer to all of life's problems.

I, personally, absorbed enough chlorine as a child to purify the Hudson River. That fact alone makes it all the more humiliating that I nearly drowned during my University swim test three years ago.

After reluctantly parting with my glasses in the locker room of the Rock on the day of the test, I followed a long line of pale, blurry objects out into the pool area. Our first objective was to swim across a narrow strip of warm water that was approximately two feet deep, apparently designed to test the valuable "walking in waist-deep water" skills what would undoubtedly save me from disaster someday. After that, I was funneled to another line, whereupon I was promptly ordered to jump into the main pool, which, to someone with 20/400 vision, looked remarkably similar to the Arctic Ocean and felt about four times as cold.

I once saw a documentary on PBS called "In Search of the Ice Age." Well, call off the search, because I found it — it's somewhere in the deep end of the pool in the Rock. Granted, the whole concept of an indoor pool was fairly new to me, and I had naively expected that the purpose of constructing a pool indoors was to keep the water warm. Apparently, the real reason is to keep as much warmth as possible from coming into contact with the University's precious supply of ice-cold water.

Once my chest re-inflated and I regained feeling below my knees, the loud blurry lane sergeant squatting on the diving board started barking orders at me. I figured she was just going to ask me to bob around in the pool for a while, or maybe play Marco Polo with the others. Instead, my lane sergeant (obviously drunk with power) started ordering me to swim a length of freestyle, something I hadn't done since approximately 1986.

They say that swimming is like riding a bicycle, but obviously "they" have never seen me ride a bicycle either, because I stretched the definition of freestyle to include "flailing all your limbs and hoping you move." To compensate for my overabundance of Free and obvious lack of Style, I decided to impress the judges by showing that I could swim all the way across the pool without stopping for air. That plan lasted about 40 seconds, and trust me, no one was impressed. In fact, it made me so dizzy that I started weaving all over my lane, doing a freestyle that had begun to look like some kind of bizarre horizontal jumping-jack.

Luckily, the University's definition of "passing" the swim test is about as loose as my definition of freestyle, so I evaded having to take the swim class. I did learn, however, that there's no shame in stopping for air. In fact, it's probably encouraged. Of course, if all else fails, there's always the Dead Man's Float.

• Freshman Freestyling