The Four Best Things About Shark Week

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Clear your schedules, grab your remotes and set your DVRs: Shark Week is upon us! If you weren’t already excited about Shark Week, here are four reasons why you should be.

1. During the summer, work feels increasingly oppressive.

It’s easy to find yourself drifting off into a daydream of vacation, longing to sit out in the sun and dip your toes into the ocean. Fortunately, Shark Week will snap you out of that dream faster than a Shortfin Mako can snatch up a mackerel. Shark Week reminds us that the ocean is not a place of delight and relaxation, it is a place of fear and danger. I’ve never been one to revel in the insipid routines of office work, but I’d choose emails and conferences over having my leg chewed off by a shark any day of the week. Shark Week gives me a greater appreciation for my safe, albeit dull, everyday life.

2. There’s something empowering about rooting for the underdog.

We love to cheer on the unlikely victors because if they succeed, it makes us feel like we too can take on any challenge that comes our way. With each underdog success, we feel our own David-and-Goliath style dreams a little more within our reach. During Shark Week, we get to see all of natures underdogs do their thing. We cheer on seals, dolphins, fish, scuba divers and basically any being that dares to swim through shark-infested waters. Even though they’re all doomed, the underdogs of the universe can still find joy in coming together to cheer on their brethren. Who knows, maybe this will finally be the year that Flipper finally defeats Jaws (it won’t be).

3. Between cycles of America’s Next Top Model, the world needs a healthy dose of fierce.

And what’s fiercer than a shark? Let me tell you: nothing. Nothing is fiercer than a shark. Sharks command attention. Sharks can render an entire beach off limits. Sharks have also had an impressive film career, stealing the screen in hits like “Sharknado” and “Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus.”

4. Shark Week proves that sharks are just like us.

For seven days, I watch interviews of marine biologists insisting that sharks tragically misunderstood. These sharks have needs, these sharks have feelings. They’re not evil, they’re just being themselves. Isn’t that true of each and every one of us? When we can’t connect with the Don Drapers and Honey Boo Boos that we see on TV, the sharks come swimming onto the Discovery Channel to remind us that we are not alone in our struggles.

It’s nice to have someone to identify with — even if that someone is a Great White shark.

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