Learning the Life of a Road Warrior

So I finally reached senior year, and I was ready to kick back and let senioritis take over. But, it turns out that life had other plans for me. For the last month I’ve been dropped into the life of a varsity athlete.

And no, I don’t mean that I suddenly discovered the vertical leap that I’ve always hoped to have or the hand-eye coordination that I once thought I did. Rather, I and a sizeable fraction of my classmates have been traveling around the country once or twice a week, in an effort to line up post-college plans.

I’ve been traveling so much that I think I can finally grasp just how much effort, organization, and commitment it takes to live the off-field life of a varsity athlete. I’ve gained tremendous respect for those among us who can balance the incredibly heavy loads of travel, school, and sport, as so many of our student athletes do.

Before this year, I glamorized in my mind the life of a frequently-travelling student or student-athlete. What could be better, I thought, than going to new, exciting places, seeing new things, and feeling independent and free? And to top it all off, the student-athletes get to compete for glory in the sport they love.

It took less than an hour into my first of many delayed trips for me to realize just how un-romantic it is to be on the road.

To start, it is practically impossible to be comfortable while travelling. Seats are inevitably too cramped and often dirty—good luck trying to open your laptop or your textbook once the passenger in front of you tilts his or her chair back. Distractions abound while food is scarce and unappealing.

But, from my perspective as a student on the interview circuit, the worst part of travel is that it takes me out of the rhythm of college life. Time off campus means more than just missed classes. It translates directly into confused schedules, missed commitments, and—crucially—a struggle to focus on academics while at home or on the road. Nothing showed me just how academic our campus’s collective mindset is than being away from it yet trying to keep motivated to work hard. It’s tough to get riled up about, say, marginal cost curves or the student’s t-test when you’re not going to be in class for days.

But that’s enough complaining—my point is just that it’s so impressive to me that so many among us manage to survive and even excel despite the incredibly high demands of travel, sport, and coursework.

In some circles, athletes are criticized for sacrificing academics to participate in their sport. The issue of which should take precedence—athletics or academics—is an important institutional and personal question that I won’t take sides on here.

But it’s clear to me that many of the athletes I’ve interacted with both as friends and during my years as a sports writer for The Crimson go to extraordinary lengths to thrive in both arenas.

Having seen how demanding even a “light” academic load can be in the context of nearly non-stop travel, I know it is impossible to understate just how remarkable an achievement this balancing act is. To be sure, the stereotyped view that athletes approach their academic responsibilities flippantly has a kernel of truth to it. There are some within the student-athlete population for whom academics are just not a priority, but the same could be said of a subset of students within any larger group at Harvard.

My month on the road has taught me many things, but perhaps more than anything else, it has beaten out of me the jealousy and mild contempt I used to hold toward the lifestyles of those who represent their teams on Saturdays. It is exceedingly hard to travel, study, and perform under pressure, and even harder to do it well.

So, to all those on the travelling squad—athletes or not—I tip my hat to you. I just hope that in a few more months of travel, at least I’ll get to reap the rewards. Maybe I’ll even get a good jump-shot.

—Staff writer Jonathan B. Steinman can be reached at steinman@fas.harvard.edu.