I Graduated As a College Athlete — Here’s How It Stole My Identity
I played division one tennis in college, and it’s been almost a year since I graduated. It was a bittersweet ending. I’d miss my team, I’d miss the school, but I was burnt out of tennis by then and I have to say, I felt ready to move on. Excited even.
But it hadn’t fully hit me that after training for over ten years, my career as a college athlete had come and gone. And I didn’t think about how lost I’d feel after losing something I’d clung to for so long.
So I wrote this article hoping someone else could relate to it, and maybe I’ll be able to sleep at night knowing I’m not the only one suffering.
So without further ado, here are the five ways I lost myself once I graduated:
1. My body turned to mush, and now I feel like a naked twelve-year-old boy
Sure, I still work out, but I don’t have time to exercise for three to four hours a day anymore — nor do I have the ability to push myself that hard. I’m an adult now for God’s sake; I have papers to sign and banking things to do. I remember when I graduated I worried about getting fat, but actually the opposite happened. I shrunk, and my muscles turned to slushy goo. You know, the kind you scoop into a slurpee cup.
2. End-of-life crisis
In an overdramatic way, a part of my life has ended. I never considered it while I was playing, but I spent the past fifteen years working towards a scholarship that’s now over. I’ve graduated to a recreational player who plays tennis every other weekend.
No one tells you what to do now, there’s no road map anymore. I’ve had coaches pushing me and parents yelling at me to be goal-oriented and driven, and now it’s over. I have to do it all myself now.
3. I’m no longer using half my brain power thinking about a sport
I didn’t realize how much time I spent thinking about tennis. When practice was, where we were playing that weekend, how annoying our coach was being that day, how tired or sore I was from practice, how bad I played last weekend, what wasn’t working for me during lift, whether I was losing my timing. I could go on forever. The point is that as soon as I graduated, half the noise in my head stopped. It was like a little man in my head took a vacuum cleaner to all the tennis files, and cleared about half my brain-space for…um…I don’t know. What do I think about now? Do I have to come up with actual thoughts?
4. I had to become obsessed with something else
Putting the sudden halt on working out that much felt like a speeding train trying to stop for a deer that’s two feet in front of it. You how that ends? It ends with deer stew, that’s how.
I went from being excited: I can do anything now! I’m free! I can pick up a new sport or throw all that extra time into cross-stitching if I feel like it.
But of course, the only thing I picked up was Netflix and about three new TV shows simultaneously.
I was grumpy the first few weeks until I realized it was because I wasn’t working out as much. Then I was grumpy again, until I finally found something else to work hard on.
Sometimes I’m still grumpy, but now I blame PMS.
5. Discovered there are people in the “real” world who work hard.
I used to be stuck in this mindset that being a college athlete made me somewhat special. And I worried that when I graduated, I’d become just another unmotivated, burger-guzzling slob like the rest of the world.
Being surrounded by the same people who train with you, think like you, and have no life like you is nice, but it makes you oblivious to what’s actually out there.
Once I left the safety of my tennis bubble, I discovered that there’s kind of a gap in my general knowledge category. All the references and celebrity names I missed out on and the TV shows I’m out of tune with finally came back to haunt me.
And not only that, but I got my ass kicked when it came to working hard.
There are unmotivated humans out there, obviously, but there are also people who never stop working. And it was refreshing to see people working towards different dreams and goals they chose for themselves, instead of something your parents got you into when you were ten.
