Track season 2014 is over and with it my athletic career in college.  I will continue to be an athlete, but I want to take this opportunity to reflect on my four years as student-athlete.

I didn’t do as well as I wanted.  I could talk a lot about the specifics of the NCAA D3 limitations and schedule, about the Athletic Department and facilities at Chapman, or even the track program specifically.  I could make some valid points.  But the most important fact is that I didn’t do as well as I wanted.

I’m not happy with that. After four years on an college track team, I sit here full of regrets.  The main regret is at the progress–or regress, rather–I’ve made as an athlete and how far I’ve let that go.

In middle school and high school, track was my big passion. I practiced 5-7 times a week and loved everything about it.  I could not imagine a world where I would not do that.  I could not imagine a life where I would go to bed without having worked out that day and be okay with it.  A life where I wouldn’t feel compelled to push a workout into a busy day.  Well, now I’m living that life.  Make no mistake, I’m not happy with it.

It’s easy to workout 2-3 hours every day when you get out of school around 3 PM.  As a triple major in college, with a full load of classes littered across your schedule from 8:30 AM until 9:45 PM and meetings starting at 10 PM nearly every night, it gets more difficult.  Sure, my classes didn’t take up that much time.  I’d be lying if I tried to tell you that I didn’t have plenty of 2-hour windows to work out in.  With so much going on, I often found myself too busy doing something else, or simply too tired to force myself into the gym, especially on days when my classes started at 1 PM, I would always plan on working out in the morning, only to find myself at a meeting until midnight the and falling asleep on top of homework around 3 AM the night before.  Needless to say, I’d wake up the next morning with barely enough time to finish that assignment.

I know what you’re probably thinking.  Excuses, excuses, excuses. And you’re right.  Just like all the objections I could raise against the division, conference, or program at Chapman, these are reasons why I can’t do it.  The famous difference between successful people and the rest, you know, the kind of difference you read about in inspirational tumblr posts, is that successful people look for way to do things while others look for reasons why it can’t be done.

Quite in line with those inspirational tumblr posts, I need to remind myself of that more often as I step into the real world.