Personal Narrative: My Swim Schedule With Academics

I hope you have enjoyed your visit in Fort Lauderdale with the Ursinus swim team tremendously. Continuing on the topic of swimming, this past weekend I participated in the Last Chance meet, hosted at the Upper Merion High School. Since I am a swim instructor on Saturdays, I had to work for three hours before the meet. At the meet, I swam a total of four events, including both the 100-yard and 50-yard Freestyle, the 100-yard Backstroke, and the 200-yard Individual Medley. Additionally, I was able to socialize and bond more with my coaches. Overall, my weekend was full of pleasurable experiences that occurred over the span of only seven hours.

My parents tell me that I took to swimming like... a fish takes to water. It is a safe place where I can float free of worries. Driven by passion and dedication, I decided to begin swimming competitively. Competitive swimming requires an intense level of determination and discipline. Forcing myself to get out of my warm bed at 5:30 in the morning to put on a still-slightly-damp swimsuit and stand in 40-degree weather waiting for practice to start. Putting up with limited lane space and irritating swimmers who think they are faster. Making a conscious effort to work on my stroke form, turns, touches, and techniques. The water becomes a whirlpool of injuries, losses, wins, friendships, enemies, and sickness. The water becomes home.

My freshman year I joined many extracurricular activities, and some of my grades started to show it. Four and a half weeks in, I had a part of the school play, I was a marcher in the marching band show for that year, and had golf practice almost every day. Each day when I finally got home, I took a shower, and then went to sleep; hardly any studying was done. A quarter of the semester passed, and my grades were below par. After realizing how bad my grades actually were, I studied thirty minutes each day. I fit in 30 minutes after play practice; while I ate before

It was sometime around 6:00 p.m. on a Thursday night in the middle of January 2016. There was a swim meet going on and it was just about to start. The teams were warming up and getting ready for the meet that was due to start in the coming hour. I was warmed up and concentrating on the race listening to music in my newly acquired platinum studio beats. The music was loud and the nerves were setting as I walked into the locker room with my friend and teammate. As we passed I said good luck to our teammate who I was racing against in the 200 free style. Then out of know were he pulled my friend to the side and whispered something in his ear. I didn’t hear what was said as I had continued to walk. My friend came over to me and I asked what he had said and he told me. He told me

I woke up nauseous, too sick to eat. The whole drive there I was praying it would be cancelled. The fear consumed me; I couldn’t move. I just wanted to be home in my warm, comfy bed, instead I was diving into an ice cold pool. After warm-up my coach gave me a pep talk, but I was too nervous to listen. Sometimes I got so nervous I’d throw up, right before my event. To this day I still don’t understand why I got so anxious at swim meets. For the past several years, I have had a love hate relationship with swimming. I always struggled with swimming, and many times I wanted to quit. The time commitment and the physical requirements have always been a little too much for my mind to handle and it all comes to a crescendo when it is time to compete. I often wondered why I continued to put

For some people, it may be difficult to manage time in order to keep up with school and still be involved with extracurricular activities. However, for myself, this was not the case. I have been involved in the Slippery Rock University Winter Guard since my freshman year, which requires much dedication and commitment. Competing in local and even international level competitions across the country, the dedication required for membership in the guard is extraordinary. My commitment to the winter guard as well as my determination in my studies has allowed me to prime my time management skills to be successful in both areas without compromising the quality of my efforts in either one. Moreover, I have also been involved in numerous volunteer opportunities including Special Olympics, therapeutic horseback riding, and sled hockey. I also have a job at the Student Health Center. Although I keep myself very busy, I have managed to maintain an overall GPA of 3.5. Through my shadowing experiences in physical therapy, I have seen that some days can be fast-paced; therefore, it is important to have the ability to manage time in order to accomplish everything effectively and

As a student who has participated in high school sports and taken multiple AP and honors level classes, I know the challenges that accompany the standard school schedule. Practices and games for the basketball team took up over three hours of my time six days every week. During school days, I had to leave my fifth period early when I had games, taking away from my valuable learning time. This forced me to try to learn the material that I had missed during the time I was participating in an event that allowed me to represent my school district. This, accompanied by the homework of all my classes, led to my loss of sleep. During my freshman year, I went to bed around 12 A.M. every night and woke up at 6:30 A.M. the next day, allowing me three

As I began my junior year, I found myself juggling a rigorous academic schedule, varsity tennis, a social life and a new job. At first, I figured I could balance all of these activities. However, I became humbled by a 32% on an early Physics test triggering sheer panic regarding future applications to college. Knowing my grades needed to trend up as a junior, I dug down and did everything possible to improve my grades. I committed myself to a nightly study regimen consisting of intermittent on-off study blocks. Diligent removal of all distractions, including my I-Phone while studying was a major key. Also, I reduced my hours at work and often went to school early to meet with my teachers to review material. This action plan ultimately led to the improvement of my grades in all classes, culminating with a “B” in Physics and meeting my overall goal of a 4.0 GPA. Yes, I had failed a single test, but the real failure was not prioritizing and planning my activities proactively. The lesson I learned from this

People need self-motivation to succeed because not every problem can be solved by others, some have to be solved by oneself. When conflicts arise, individuals need to seek out the path of best fit to conquer the issue at hand. Throughout my entire childhood, I aspired to be a great swimmer. When I was a young adolescent, my favorite sport to watch during the Olympics was swimming. How could someone move so fast through the water? The extremely close races and extraordinary comebacks always excited me. I wanted experience the thrill for myself.

Instead of feeling pressure to conform as a student at the University of Georgia, I have found that being in college has made me value the importance of a higher education more so than I ever had before. During high school, my primary goal was to play well enough to receive a football scholarship. At that time, my focus was not on academics. However, since I've arrived at the University of Georgia, my entire concept of the value of a college degree has slowly changed. Rather than seeing just football in my future, I can now picture myself as a football player with a college degree. Consequently, instead of having a negative impact on my personal growth, college has helped me broaden as a person.

When I attended my first Empire Senior Dinner five years ago, I always wondered about what it would be like to stand up here. About to finish high school, about to finish Empire, and move on to college. It doesn’t seem too long ago when I thought that seemed eternally far away. I guess time really does fly when you’re having fun.

Since November, I received a few more awards for Mount Si High School and the girls swim team. I was awarded “Student of the Term for Science”. I was nominated by teachers and selected for this award from my entire senior class. For swim team, I was selected by my team for “Most Inspirational” award and received the “2016-2017 Coach’s Award”. At Meadowbrook Urgent Care Center, they asked me to take on more volunteer responsibilities such as running the front desk, including making patient appointments, signing them in, and answering patient

It all began at East Ridge high, I was a junior at the time just trying to get by and ready for school to end long before it even started. The strange things began happening randomly, the first occurrence was in my swim class, I had always preferred swimming, the feeling of the water running across my skin and the waves created a rythmic motion that was very calming; I was super pysched they offered it as an alternative to gym class. One day during swim class I was practicing a technique called the butterfly stroke. I started slow and as I got the hang of it my speed built thats when it started to happen, with every stroke of my arms the water came to life and started creating waves that grew larger I hadn't notice until I had reached the wall

13 years. It has been 13 years since I first plunged into the pool to begin my first lesson. I was small, skinny, and shy at the time, not willing to talk to people. I had tried other sports; baseball, soccer, basketball, but I found those to difficult. My dad first brought me to a pool, to splash around in the play area. But I soon found myself wanting to go the deeper parts where the whirlpool and the lazy river were. So I began group lessons on the basics on how to swim, most of the other participants were older than me so I did not make conversation with them. After I finished a couple of lessons and learned how to swim the most basic two strokes; freestyle and breaststroke, I joined a summer team, the Bradley Farm Wave. I was not very

Finally! I did it! I did something I never thought I would be able to do. I’m now able to do a flip turn for swimming. When I was younger, about third or fourth grade, I was in competitive swimming. At the beginning of each season, we would review basics, strokes, kicks, turns, and many other fundamentals. I was never able to do a flip turn against the wall. It wasn’t until I had gone off to the side with an instructor for a few days and worked at it until I got it.