Back to School
Finding a balance between school and sport is a struggle for most athletes, including myself. Rather than discussing my training like normal, this blog describes my recent problems and solutions for my own struggle to find balance.
Over the last couple of years my consistent driving force was ski racing and training. Although I have always enjoyed academics I found myself failing to pursue my academic goals for fear of taking away from my athletic ambitions.
This last year for me was officially a "gap year," a break in education between high school and college. Although I still took three classes over the fall and summer semesters for fear of complete abstinence losing my progress. I had no plans for what my college education would look like as I knew I did not want to be a full time student out of state.
A week before UAA's fall semester began I finalized my plan, I would achieve a mathematics major through UAA while taking 20 credits a year. Thankfully, with my college credits from high school this gives me a potential graduation date of spring 2026. Not bad for a part time student if you ask me.
With planning as a pillar of my mental stability, knowing what I am doing long term for education and skiing relives some stress and helps me feel confident. Hopefully soon I will have a plan for relieving my parents of their greatest financial burden, me.
I am now a little over a month into the semester at UAA and things could not be much better. I am taking in person classes for the first time in over two years, a scary thought at first. Watching a lecture in person is significantly more effective for my understanding and my ten minute bike to and from school is one of the highlights of my day. I have the pleasure of my ideal schedule this semester, three math classes for a total of eight credits with lecture times falling perfectly in-between training sessions. Unfortunately this perfection will not last forever as next semester I will have to start taking my missing general education classes.
On the skiing side of things, my last month of training has been a little challenging with some sickness. Once I got over my brief illness I was back on the horse, and training has been consistent since then. Looking on the bright side, being sick this time of year in Anchorage is not so bad when it allows me to skip a lot of the nasty 40 degrees and raining weather. Fortunately I am now headed down to Park City, Utah for the US ski team's annual fall camp. Camp should be a perfect time to dry out and tan while training at altitude. If all goes according to plan when I am back in Anchorage I will be skiing on snow.
My apologies for the lack of photos in this blog, schoolwork just isn't that exciting. To keep this blog from being too barren I have attached some photos from my non-school activities recently. Hopefully you enjoyed this blog despite the lack of skiing content, next blog will be back to skiing.
