Nobody tells you how hard it is to balance being a full time university student and playing squash on the professional tour. Let me tell you though, it’s freaking hard! I am currently in my third year at Harvard University and I feel like I am just getting the hang of managing both my academics and my squash career. Forget about my first two years. Those were a tumultuous rollercoaster ride. From niggling injuries in the fall and having to miss the first few matches of the season, to really training consistently well for a couple of weeks, only to be setback again from the stresses of exams and having to cram out ten to fifteen page papers. Back again to a solid few weeks of training and just as I am finally getting the confidence back, the college season is over early March. Now what? The college season has ended which means that ninety-five percent of the team puts their racket down and enjoys the life of a “normal” college student. They won’t pick up a racket until the end of the summer. However, I have to keep up the training to prepare for all of the tournaments that I need to cram in during the summer. I am unable to play as many tournaments as I used to play, pre college, (besides the ones that I compete in, during the school year, which are in the United States). As a result, I spend the majority of my summer trying to play as many tournaments as possible in order to get a boost on my ranking, before it slips again during the following school year. For the past three years this has been a continuous cycle, with each year getting slightly easier for me to manage as I hopefully become more mature in handling my responsibilities!
Throughout the school year, I usually play about 5 WSA events: Carol Weymuller and US Open in September/October, and then the Tournament of Champions, Greenwich Open, and Cleveland Open in January. Fortunately for me, the Tournament of Champions and Greenwich Open fall during my winter break, so I do not miss any school, but for the others, I constantly have to balance my pro life with my academic life. Usually I have to miss one or two days of classes, which is tough because I always come back feeling so lost, as if I missed the entire semester. Most of the time my professors are understanding, provided that I keep up with my work, put the effort in, and only miss the class once or twice. I have become a natural at making sure I send the work in on time to my professors when I am at tournaments because I have been doing this since I was in 10th grade in high school. Granted, University is a lot more challenging, but it all comes down to time management and organization. However, there have been times where I have waited until the last possible second to hand in my assignments, while at a tournament. I’ve even had to finish writing papers the morning before playing a match. While all the other professionals are taking their afternoon naps or lounging around and watching television, I will be sitting at the hotel desk reading analytical texts that are so dense that it will leave me mentally drained before my match even starts. It’s a rough life.
I remember one tournament in particular, the LA Open, which took place this past November. I was playing the WSA tournament and also the WDSA (Women’s Professional Doubles) tournament that was happening during the same weekend. On that Saturday, I had to play two Pro-Am doubles matches in the morning, my semi final match for the WSA event, and then the WDSA semi final right after I finished my singles match. In between all of these matches, I was sitting in the locker room reading and analyzing an anthropological text on poverty in Brazil, writing a philosophical response paper to make up for my absence that week in one of my classes, and studying for a midterm that I had the following week. Talk about mentally draining! I completed all my assignments while I was in LA for those tournaments, but it took me about four days to finally recover from that weekend.
Having just completed the first semester of my third year at Harvard, I’ve realized that you can’t always be able to prioritize squash and academics to the same degree. Sometimes, like during exam period and midterm week, squash needs to take a back seat and I need to focus all of my attention on my academics. And then there are times during the semester when I am able to train twice a day because my workload for that week is on the lighter side or I have a tournament to prepare for. Life at University is a constant battle of knowing when to push more in squash and when to focus more on academics. By the time I finally master the art of balancing University and playing professional squash, I will probably be standing on the podium receiving my diploma to graduate. A little on the late side, but at least I will know that I made it.
