I have some super exciting news to share with you! As some of you know, I was on the women’s swim team at Saint Louis University (SLU). SLU recently started a Sports Business Concentration program and interviewed a number a student-athlete alumni for the business school’s alumni magazine, Shareholder….including me! We were asked about how competing in athletics at SLU has influenced our lives. The story was written by John Gilmore.
One of the biggest takeaways from being a collegiate student-athlete was learning to set priorities and improve my time management skills. Plus, I had to let go of being a perfectionist, which is still a work in process. At the start of each season, I’d have a goal in mind. It could have been to set a new personal record or achieve a certain grade in a class. School was my number one priority, so I wouldn’t beat myself if my swimming times were a little slower than I wanted. And since I wanted to compete in swimming throughout college and still have a life, I wouldn’t drive myself crazy if I didn’t get an A+ on every paper or test.
I also learned about the real life application of the 80/20 rule. In school, I noticed that when writing a paper, I could get 80 percent of the way there in 20 percent of the time. The remaining 80 percent of my time spent on the paper would be for minor details that wouldn’t make a significant difference in my overall performance. Sound familiar while drafting a blog post?
You can read the rest of the article and Spring 2011 issue here. And thanks again to SLU for asking me to be a part of article!
How exciting!!! I’m sure the lessons you learned from being a student athlete will stay with you forever!
I actually flipped through this issue while I was home over Easter! (My sister receives it as an alum and her boyfriend was in the article about the Sports Marketing program.) So true that when you are balancing multiple commitments, you have to let some of the perfectionism go… :)
Ooops! I accidentally deleted Maddy’s comment:
“I admire student athletes! It’s hard maintaing a rigorous class, training and game schedule and still try to enjoy your time in the process. It must be tough! And I never thought about the 80/20 rule. I’ll have to think about that next time I’m tweaking/retweaking a post :) “