“Freshman Year me was the worst me,” “I don’t think I’ve ever cried so much within a 24 hour period”, “I eventually got so okay with not knowing what I was doing,” “All I want to do is go home.” These are just a couple sayings I heard on a daily basis throughout my freshman year, especially on Sunday’s during heart to hearts about how bad our lives sucked and how we probably weren’t gonna make it another week.

A lot of this had to do with the fact that we were up to our eyeballs in schoolwork and were probably going to “set a record for the fastest to ever fail a class”, another part was maybe because it’s 5 pm and all we’ve done is slept all day to recover from the exhausting week and our alarms will go off in almost 12 hours exactly for practice.

After Saturday's practice (if we didn’t have a meet that week) we practiced almost a total of 24 hours that week, this doesn’t include the all the daily mandatory visits to see the trainer about an injury(if you had one), in which you had to spend your free time or day of sleeping in to see them.

My typical schedule without injury goes: practice, lift, school, eat, maybe nap, swim, eat, study hall (gotta get those 6 hours in), maybe a night class, and sleep. It’s hard, that wasn’t every day of the week but definitely most of them.

Being a student-athlete is hard, but when you look back at your week after a four-hour nap after practice on Saturday before you start the weekend homework, you feel like a really sore superhero. It’s kind of a cool feeling, to be able to “handle” so much. But all that builds up and some days you feel like you’re barely hanging in there and miss home, and that’s okay and normal too.

Freshman year is a scary thing people hype up, a lot of people do great with some parts and not great with others. Some people do fine with all of it but are just mentally tired, however, when you are finished freshman year know you are a better person. Know that every hard day and night you had, taught you some lesson and you are better for it.

One of my best friends and teammates Annie, (Annemarie Schnoor) is a prime example of HOW TO DO Freshman Year. After having a not so great season in the pool or meeting her own expectations, she threw herself into the optional off-season practices as a way to overcome her postseason sadness. As a result of these practices, this past season she was the fastest 100 freestyler the women’s team had, and overall a huge asset to our team.

I asked her how she overcame all of the problems she faced freshman year, and this is what she had to say. “My freshmen year was met with a lot of disappointment and overall sadness. I had arguably the worst season of my life and went nowhere near my best times at our conference championship met.

Afterward, I felt lost and frustrated because I put so much into swimming, but it wasn’t giving anything back to me. I told myself that sophomore year would be different, so every single day for the next year, i pushed my limits. I used my failures to motivate me, and now it makes me appreciate my successes that much more.”

Freshman year is about making mistakes and learning to handle different obstacles, and the result is determined by how you choose to take and change those experiences. This is crucial especially as an athlete, learning to juggle everything by yourself is important. There are also people who don’t handle freshman year the best but still use it to grow off of to be better for the future.

Another example of a freshman year student-athlete is another best-friend and teammate Megcow (Megan Cowan). Last year she missed almost the whole season due to an injury and really wanted to quit because it wasn’t worth it anymore to continue this sport from the sideline.

This year Meg was also an enormous asset to our team and medaled in an individual event, when I asked her what contributed to her success, this is what she said. “My freshman year I came in with a torn shoulder and torn attitude about swimming. I thought college would be a joke and could fake my way through it all and quickly came to the realization I couldn’t. While I hardly got to swim my first year, if I hadn’t had the team there to catch me then I wouldn’t have been able to work harder than I ever had in the sport. This resulted with my most successful swim season ever. I took for granted everything it had to offer and now this team is a second family to me. Freshman year is hard but being an athlete, you come in with a built in support system and that support system quickly turns into lifelong friends.”

Freshman year will be difficult regardless of who you are for multiple reasons, if you think you’re doing it all wrong then know you probably are doing the exact same as everyone else. Everyone adapts differently, there is no right way to “do freshman year” but there is a way to set yourself up for the next year by learning and making mistakes. Finishing Freshman Year is easy, but overcoming it is another.