the unfortunate reality of a student athlete

It’s crazy how quickly the school year flies by. My school uses a trimester schedule, so we’re almost to our midterms! And I’m scared. I guess I’m a relatively good student. I’m taking three AP classes and advanced math. But it gets hard to fit in time to study for all my classes, and to find time to get extra help from my teachers when I have track practice every day after school. I got a D on my last AP Chemistry test!!!!!:) And that was good for me! I was happy that I got over 50%! What is this life coming to?!?

And as a result, you also might want to know that I, being probably the most popular girl at school and having so many friends and being ever so cool (that was all a lie), spent this past lovely Friday night watching YouTube videos about AP Chemistry. Exciting, right?? I mean, who could resist the beckoning of all the AP Chemistry teachers in the world, just begging you to watch them lecture about acids and bases and titrations and redox reactions and electrolysis and molarity and molality and resonance structures and activation energy and precipitation and solubility and I think you’re probably bored with my recounting of AP chemistry.

Whenever I’m in season (August through October for cross country, then February through May for track) it gets so hard to try to stay on top of all the things I need to get done at home and school and everywhere else and still manage to maintain some sanity. Meets always take so long and it’s too hard to concentrate on any homework at all by the time I get home and I’m so tired. So that crosses out one or two days per week to do homework and piles on more for the rest of my days. Add church, piano lessons, vocal lessons, FCA, volunteering at the animal shelter, Best Buddies, and all the other various activities I do, and I have pretty much no time left for anything. It’s crazy.

I don’t think that teachers at school realize how hard it is to be a crazy busy high school student and how hard it is to fit everything in. And I gotta admit that sometimes I don’t prioritize like I should. I would much rather spend my time running and looking up track stats and rankings than doing my homework. I’d much rather go to track practice than spend any more time with my AP chemistry teacher. I think that student-athletes are choosing the “athlete” part over the “student” part more often than we should be. How do you fix that? I couldn’t tell you. I know that I can’t realistically count on getting a scholarship in college for running. I don’t even know if I’m going to run in college. I can count on getting academic scholarships for college more realistically, though. Running is a huge part of my life, and it probably will continue to be such an important part of me, but it’s likely not going to be my career no matter how much I love it. For all those other student-athletes out there, I know that you love your sport. You’re passionate about it. You’d rather be doing it than doing anything else. But is it really what you’re going to be doing for the rest of your life? What if you get hurt and can’t do it anymore? Then what will you do? Education is more reliable and more important, whether any of us like it or not.

What an unfortunate realization.

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