In this second part, Katee tells us about her hectic life as a student athlete at a Division III school, and what makes a liberal arts college different from a university.

Part 1 is here

Transcription

Kamila
Hey college kids. Welcome back to my podcast who cares about college. This is part two of my interview with Katie. So if you have not listened to part one, make sure to do that. Also make sure to subscribe and check out my blog, a college kid.com For more college related content, but other than that, I hope you enjoy

it’s amazing. So now let’s actually move on to college experience. So, the summer before, again, I’m stuck on this recruited athlete because you’re like the first one I’ve actually interviewed. So with a recruited athlete, is there any difference in how you I guess, enter college, you know, most students, they come onto campus, they’re assigned to dorm like building they’re assigned roommates and stuff, is there anything different for recruited athletes coming in? Do you have to go through like a procedure or something.

Katee
Um, we have to sign up to fill out a lot more forms, that’s for sure. Getting medically cleared. schools try to put athletes living with other athletes. My school does not like to put athletes from the same team living together, which is I think, a good thing because you’ve already spent, I would say about 60% of your day with them, it’s nice to get some time away from your teammates to just to keep up like a positive, positive, healthy relationship. But they they put you most of the time with another athlete because it’s someone who understands your schedule and is probably waking up at 7am to go to lists to and you when you’re getting recruited. So the week before I committed in the September of my senior year, I did an overnight with the I stayed over with one of the juniors on the team and I met the team got, like got a feel for what their what their day in life was I attended three classes, I watched a practice, we had Movie Night, we did nails, we did face masks, we had all that, just to feel the campus feel the feel the vibe of the student body, like without the coaching staff hovering over your shoulder. So that was that was something that I got to experience that. Like people who aren’t prospective athletes don’t really get to just go stay overnight. Um, so that’s that was probably like the biggest The most striking difference between applying as I mean, applying us getting recruited, instead of not getting recruited.

Kamila
And you did say that you spend a lot a lot of your time with your teammates. And that’s kind of part of the reason you guys don’t spend time together and in the dorm. So can you take me through like, it just it could be you can give your personal experience or just any athlete in general. So how does your routine differ from like a normal student? Like, what are there certain requirements of you athletically, or like certain practices that you have to attend that other students obviously don’t have to?

Katee
Yes, um, so, in the offseason, I would say about 70% of the practices are mandatory. And in season when you’re actually playing games, everything is mandatory. I’m eating breakfast, lunch and dinner with my teammates. We’re doing I mean, I wake up, we have lift starting at 7am. Together, we go to breakfast afterwards, then we go to our class. And then I like see them around the dining hall, we’re probably eating together or eating with friends outside the team. And then we go to practice from either 14 630 or 639. So we’re just we’re just together all the time. It’s it’s an incredible time commitment playing college sport. Playing to was overwhelming. Really, really, really difficult. And I would not recommend it to people who are interested in the pre med field because it’s a lot to be doing all that it’s a lot. What when I first got there in the fall, I just I didn’t join any clubs because I was so incredibly overwhelmed. But when I got my footing, I was able to do some extracurriculars that weren’t college sports, and that was really nice. But it is it is an overwhelming time commitment. And you’re spending a lot a lot a lot of time with these people on your team.

Kamila
And with the professors at any college in general. Are they more lenient with athletes? because you are doing what about like four hours of mandatory like practices than the regular students, so four hours of your day, at minimum are dedicated to something. So like, are they more lenient? Or do you still have like the same workload, the same amount of classes you need to take?

Katee
Yeah, so I’m still I still have the same workload, I still take the same amount of classes. Um, I would say, most of the professors are really understanding, in the sense that if I tell them I mean, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve I’ve only asked for an extension on two papers. And they were due to the due to the fact that we weren’t getting back from a game until past midnight, and I just didn’t have Wi Fi to submit my papers. And of course, they’re understanding about that, of course, they’re understanding about bus rides and really far away games. But you’re still expected to do all the same work. And whether I mean, they’re, they’re understanding in the sense where they will give you one or two more days to submit it. But you’re still doing all the same work, and you’re still expected to participate in class and show up like every everyone else.

Kamila
God, that is so much more stress. It was just like high school 2.0 For you just,

Katee
it was it was high school on absolute crack, I’m not gonna lie. I had no idea what it meant to play a college sport, let alone to college sports. It really is a whole new world from playing high school sports, because high school sports are you you’re able to leave high school and actually detach from your sports, you just have two hours. Whereas college, you you really are just mentally, mentally and physically just exhausted on top of having to learn. And it’s it’s it’s intense.

Kamila
Can you tell me so you did mention how like, you know, you’d go to bus rides, and sometimes there’d be far away games. So can you tell me how, I guess college sports university, how they work? Like, what? How often do you have games? I know you said you have practice, like almost every day, and they’re all mandatory. But how did like the games work? How do you compete with other schools and like, what other schools do you compete with?

Katee
Okay, so we play every team twice in our conference. And I think there’s about 1010 or 11 teams in our conference. And depending on how well you do with your conference, then you can qualify for the NCAA tournament. And if you don’t qualify, then your season just ends after typical conference play. And you have about three or four games with teams outside your conference. My basketball and lacrosse, my basketball games were Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, which was great have games on Saturdays. Because those weren’t class days, you didn’t have to run down to the athletic field house after whatever seminar was trying to stay awake in. And I think Swathmore does a really phenomenal job. They take at the time block from three to six, and or three to seven, three to seven. And they don’t have any classes, not including labs during that time, because they want to ensure that the student athletes aren’t missing out on classes, because of practice times. And practice times are solely scheduled around the team’s schedule. So we’re encouraged to take any class we want, and do any extracurricular that we want. And then we will schedule practice time around that because we know that academics come first at Swarthmore. And they do everything in their power to make it so I mean, I’m pre med, I can take my lab from one to four. And practice isn’t until 430 to 630, or whatever. So I’m not having to choose between classes that I am interested in in my major and playing sport. And that that isn’t true for all schools. Especially at the division one and division two level. Athletes have a very limited timeframe that they get to take classes in and it really limits the classes that they get to actually enroll in and participate in. And I knew I wanted to play division three sports because I would get to be pre med and I would get to take classes that I wanted to. And my coaches would be more understanding. And I wasn’t necessarily my whole life wasn’t athletics, which is the case when you play division one sports. I was like a student, athlete, student first athlete second.

Kamila
And you did mention that you have a lot of games. And then like, with each team, you would play a couple times. So you said Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, you’d have a game, and then sometimes they’d be like, far away.

Katee
Yeah, I mean, some days I wasn’t getting back, I mean, my game would start at seven, and we would probably go until nine, and then we have to get dinner. And we’d probably eat that on the bus. And if it was like a school that was two hours away, we wouldn’t we wouldn’t get home for a little while. And it was it was really hard to do homework on the bus and just structure my schedule around that much traveling, because you’re not doing that, that traveling in high school, I mean, you’re going to the the high school 15 minutes away, it was a whole new level. And I was really pressed for time. And I really had to, I mean, I stumbled at first, managing my time and scheduling it. So I was getting sleep and I was getting my studying and and it’s hard because being a college athlete really means that something’s gonna take a hit, whether it’s like your sleeping time, your social time, or your studying time. And I mean, to each their own. Whatever, you want to sacrifice a little bit or little chunks from each, and I really had to learn what worked for me, and how basically, I had to relearn how to study to make sure I was successful.

Kamila
Okay, so before we get into actual academics life at Swarthmore. Okay, so I want to understand how did you How long did it take you, to me? It’s just astounding the numbers that you’ve given me and how often like you’re committed to sports and sports only. So can you take me through? Like, how long did it take you to actually develop a routine? How long did it take you to? Like, I don’t know, prioritize and create a schedule, and what advice would you give for high schoolers who are coming in as recruited athletes? Because you did say it’s like, just completely was much more intense?

Katee
Yeah. Um, I don’t even so, this last year was my freshman year. I got sent home in March due to COVID. Um, in all honesty, I don’t I don’t even think I had my footing until I got sent home. And I wasn’t playing sports anymore. And I haven’t been playing sports since because my conferences season for last spring, and this fall and this spring have all been canceled because of the pandemic. I don’t, I don’t think I ever really, truly caught my footing. Like I had in high school because I had it down pat. I knew when to study when to do everything. And and I really managed my time well. I don’t think I got it. I don’t think I really got it down until I came home. And I took a step back and sort of bounced back from everything that was happening because it was it was really, I mean, I was struggling for a while. But I just I just kept going with it. Because I mean, you’re just like rolling with the punches as they come. biggest advice would be you’re going to have to really put your schedule on a piece of paper and set reminders on your phone and just sort of lined up your week. So you know, when you have time to take a breather and take a nap, take a quick break. And basically detach from your life and use all the resources possible. Go to your professors office hours, the first week that you have classes, meet them, introduce yourself to them, tell them you’re an athlete, establish a nice relationship with them that you can lean on. So when you’re not understanding, you can talk to them and say listen, I have practice during the office hours you have on your syllabus. Would you be willing to stay an extra 30 minutes and explain level law to me so I can understand it. So I can do well in your class and do well on this upcoming tests and establish a relationship with establishing a relationship with those professors is probably the most integral thing you can do.

Kamila
Okay, so we’ve gone through like a thorough, I guess, analysis of athletics at just like any school. So can you let’s move on to academic. So, again, your first student athlete I’ve had, and then the first real liberal arts college I’ve had as well. So can you describe how your education differs from like, the simple university student versus liberal liberal arts? Like how do they approach it? You Courseload everything?

Katee
Yes. Okay. So there are a number of requirements that you need to hit in order to graduate besides just fulfilling your major. So there are a certain number of humanities, social sciences, lab sciences, and yes, what your heart you have to pass a swim test as well, as well as take PE credits if you’re not an athlete. So you need all that to graduate. So the first week that you’re at Swarthmore, you have to pass a swim test. Why do they want everyone to be able to swim, I don’t know. It’s, it’s really, it’s entertaining. To watch a bunch of new kids flail around in a pool for a little while. And they have everyone take classes in all the fields. And you really need to, you really need to get on top of all the requirements at the start. If you want to major in biology, you still have to take this like same for humanities classes that everyone else does, and same social social science classes. To graduate, it just you have flexibility in what your actual classes but you, you need to hit a wide variety of subjects in order to graduate and I and I, I like that I think it’s, it really pushes kids outside of their comfort zone. And it really makes you see, oh, this is interesting. This is something that I would like to pursue, and then maybe I’ll throw in a minor one day, and maybe I’ll throw in a double major. And I think it really allows kids to grow as students

Kamila
at a liberal arts college, are there certain things that are not offered? Because it is liberal arts? It’s in the name? So are there certain like topics or fields of study that are not offered that could be offered at like, I don’t know. State School, that’s like a typical university.

Katee
Exactly. Okay. So we don’t actually have a major called pre med. And you can major in like, you can do pre med or pre law at some schools. Or you can take you can major in something like sports medicine or sports broadcasting that isn’t offered at Swarthmore. You have much broader majors because it’s not as big of a school and it’s a liberal arts school. So I mean, we don’t have molecular biology majors, you just have biology majors, but maybe you’re taking three molecular biology classes, there’s just not the majors are a lot broader. But Swathmore lets you, you can do this amazing thing, which is creating your own major, you just have to assign it to a department. So let’s say I wanted to create a special a special major with the political science department and the Classics Department where I wanted to talk about any I mean, I wanted to take classes on and write my thesis on a mix of those two classes, I create something called a special major, and you would just have to apply and you can you can end up doing that, which I think is really amazing, an amazing thing that Swarthmore does because they want you to be creative with your with your education.

Kamila
And so you are double majoring in political science and biology. Can you tell me how you personally came upon those two majors?

Katee
So I’ve always been interested in government, politics, and especially US history, and getting to school at Swarthmore, taking lab classes that are really hard taking STEM classes that are really hard. I’ve always loved taking a history, political science or humanities class as my fun class where I get to write argumentative papers and engage in seminars and discussions and sort of like, use the other side of my brain. I would I would just the past four semesters, just take classes in them. And I racked up enough credits that I was looking at the major requirement and I and I just sort of said, I’m gonna go for it. I’m gonna put this as my other major because if I have the credits for it, why not just go for it?

Kamila
And in terms of networking and internship opportunities, how has Swathmore helped you? Like, I don’t know, you’re still a sophomore. So you still have like a lot of time in COVID did happen. But like, how does networking work in liberal arts college? How do they offer internships? When when like a recruiter sees someone in a liberal liberal arts college versus like a university? Do they view them differently? Or is it relatively the same?

Katee
I would say I would so for that last question about what recruiters see when they see liberal arts versus university I would say they look more towards if your school is like within the top 50. More so than if it’s a liberal arts, college versus University. Swathmore uses this program called handshake to get students resumes out there and find and find internships by letting recruiters know that these students are interested in also putting out basically the word via email. I mean, I get like two a day about really interesting internship opportunities. I currently have an internship right now, in my hometown. And I’ve been able to do that because I’m doing remote learning at the moment, I work at a gynecology and fertility clinic and doctor’s office for women’s health in Princeton, New Jersey called kind body. And I work as a clinical intern there. And I would say having Swathmore, as my school definitely helped when reaching out. Because Swathmore is it’s a name associated to a good liberal arts college and a institution that puts out students looking to go to graduate school, I think it’s I want to say like 98% of the students go on, and do more education after Swathmore. So people giving out internships and jobs, know that they’re giving it to people who are most likely continuing their education, and really just want to grow. Who’s the first half of that question? Oh, so the sports programs also have, we’re in contact with all the alumni. I mean, each each year, we get a sheet of alumni, their jobs and their emails, and their major when they went to Swarthmore in their class year. So I can just go on and look up the women’s lacrosse team, alumni networking roster and see, oh, this, this woman is now a doctor, now a gynecologist, and I’m interested in that. So let me just let me just take her phone number and just just reach out to her and be like, Hey, I’m currently on lacrosse team, Bond about our experiences being athletes and sort of network, get your name out there to people who went through what you went through in college and who, who went on a similar track and kind of get their get their get their knowledge on what it’s like in my in my case, applying to medical school, going to medical school doing residency, I mean, I have a vast accessibility to lit a list of alumni that I can reach out to, that I’m really happy about from the lacrosse team.

Kamila
So it’s not just like athletes, or the athletic athletic departments in general, is it something more specific to Swarthmore? I would

Katee
say it’s something more specific to Swathmore because they know that their athletes are going to go out in the world. And I mean, when we graduate, for the most part, our athletic careers are over and it’s out into the world, continuing education getting getting like a really intense job. So having people that went through this kind of experience that you did and went through the same him sort of trail that you did. Learning from whatever they went through and sort of following in their footsteps and talking to them is an amazing resource that the athletic department at Swarthmore really does a great job of giving their student athletes.

Kamila
I mean, yeah, that is incredible for networking purposes to Yeah, that’s amazing. Okay, so I want to discuss two more, I guess we could say major topics before we wrap up here. So number one is how do the academics in high school compared to college, and just like college in general, like the difficulty, the rigor, the kinds of expectations, professors have a view that high school teachers perhaps did or didn’t have?

Katee
Yeah, so college moves so much faster than high school faster than you could ever imagine. You’re not going to get homework points. In a lot of classes, you’re not going to get I mean, in STEM classes, you’re not necessarily going to get participation points. I was shocked. My first semester when my psychology class was 60% of my grade was the final and 40% was the midterm, I’d never experienced anything like that it was incredibly intimidating. And so freelance, because you’re not getting little points for homework assignments, or little things like that, or even showing up for class. So it’s really, it’s really on you as a student to do the readings, come to class prepared, and ask questions with like, with your professor in office hours, if you’re having any trouble, because it’s really easy to say, Oh, they’re not going to ask me about that reading. Because I only have to note for the midterm. And then the week before the midterm, you realize, oh, I have to do 10 readings. And I suddenly have 30 questions for my professor, it’s so much easier in college to lose track of your assignments, because the professors are not there to hold your hand like they are in high school. And at Swarthmore, you don’t see your grades until really like, the last week of classes.

Katee
Are you serious?

Katee
Oh, it’s, it’s it’s so intimidating, because you really don’t know where you’re standing. And they do that to encourage you to just learn and try your hardest regardless. So it’s hard. It’s not like you can refresh say, Oh, I just got a nice little five points for that homework assignment, I’m doing great. It’s sort of you have to be on top of yourself. And no one’s going to do the work for you except for your except for yourself. And you really need to do the homework on your own. And it’s easy to it’s easy to think that you don’t need to do it because you’re not getting a grade for it. But it will come back and bite you in the butt because those midterms, those finals are intense. And college classes are such a big step up from high school classes that there really is no way to prepare for them. Besides learning the foundation of good studying habits, like doing the readings, doing practice homework questions, and making sure you have good time management.

Kamila
Yeah, I’ve just one quick question. A lot of people can just BS that’s the term people use nowadays BS their way through high school. And like I’m most a lot of students do like, you know, there’s a class and you’re like, okay, so long as I do this stuff, even if I don’t know the subject to Well, I can pass it, I can get a good grade and it is college like completely differently. You just can’t be so like, you need to absolutely know the stuff or is it like high school where you can like get away with some things

Katee
really depends upon your major. That I would say, at Swarthmore, you’re not getting away with anything. You need to dedicate an insane amount of time to studying and under understanding the material. And at other schools, where you have different majors than at Swarthmore, I think you’re allowed to get away with Bs in your way through and, and not really pushing yourself. But that really isn’t the case at Swarthmore. And that really isn’t the case at like any high academic institution and students who didn’t establish a good foundation for studying and learning really struggle in the beginning at Swarthmore, and I would say people like in general struggle the first semester because it’s hard and you want to make friends and suddenly you’re, you’re not you don’t have someone doing your laundry for you and you have to schedule your own lunches and your whole life isn’t just like walking with your hand held by adults. that it’s really hard, um, and Swathmore does this amazing thing where your entire freshman fall is pass fail. So you don’t get grades, you actually just get a pass or a fail, and you can’t uncover them, no one sees them. Which was really, really good. Because when you struggle at first getting to college, and you’re overwhelmed with so many things, they don’t want your freshman fall to hold your GPA down.

Kamila
Yeah, pretty sure that’s probably. Okay. And the last major topic I want to discuss is, who should attend a liberal arts college? What are the specific characteristics that a liberal arts college has? Versus like university? Who would you recommend attend to liberal arts college, besides other than like a university, which is like kind of the only other option?

Katee
Yes, so liberal arts colleges, I want to say, are usually smaller in nature. So you’re also getting a smaller ratio of students to professor. So people who really want to explore new fields, new classes, and basically just new topics in general, or people can’t really decide between certain classes in the sense of like stem versus humanities versus social sciences, if you have a passion that sort of overlaps more than overlaps, different courses, and sort of can explore and you really want to, like expand in more ways than just going forward and really just hyper focusing on only one subsection of what your college has to offer. If you want that then attend to liberal arts college. Because you may end up double majoring and you may end up you may end up finding a whole new passion that you never would have otherwise.

Kamila
Okay. And it’s also liberal arts, as I understand it is mainly for people. Well, like, I mean, there are other reasons too, but one of the main is like if you want to go do a graduate or like a PhD as well, right? Yeah. So we’re getting to an end here. So we’re getting to an end here. And there’s one thing I ask of everyone. So it’s advice, what advice would you give for number one, high school students, they can be any year and it can be about anything like the college application process or preparing for college. And then number two would be for current college students. Maybe they’re lost or like really stressed out, they don’t know what they’re doing. So what advice would you give for those two groups of people.

Katee
So for people looking at colleges and starting their application process and or starting your college search process, I would say really take advantage of websites and podcasts like these and blogs, and school newspapers from colleges that you’re looking at, because you’re going to you’re going to hear from students who are currently there. And you’re going to get a direct response of what their school is like, and how it’s how the school basically treats their students and issues that are coming up on campus because especially with what’s going on in the world right now. And with COVID. You want to know how your school’s administration is going to respond to emergencies. And treat students when they’re asking for help. And just, if you’re looking at a school, look at how they responded to COVID. And look at how they responded to students asking to lower tuition or for help with grades or basically how their students on campus or off campus are enrolled are, how they how they feel that their administration is treating them because you want to go to a school that’s going to care about you as an individual student, and a school that’s going to recognize you as important and not just see you as as a paycheck. And you’ll see from that so much more than you could ever imagine and really choose a school that has so many things to offer you like extracurriculars. Classes, majors, professors, campus life, don’t just pick a school because you think it’s going to have great parties or because it’s warm, or because you like its colors really just dive in and try to learn as much as you can about the school. And I think that you’ll be satisfied with what you choose. And for people who feel like they’re lost right now. I would say that I don’t know how to get you back on track. But I think that the most important thing that I learned during these last few months is that life gets derailed. And everyone tells you that your college days are supposed to be the best days of your life. And that’s not true. To say that four years of your life are going to be the best. And then if you don’t take advantage of them, or if they’re not perfect the entire time that it wasn’t somehow worth it is sort of like leading people astray. Because Nothing’s worse than saying this is supposed to be the best time in my life. For now, I’m supposed to be enjoying College and I’m at home, doing online learning. Everyone’s struggling, they may not just be showing it. And it’s okay to not know what’s going on right now. And it’s okay to be struggling because things can only go up from here and you’re going to learn a lot more from struggling then if it was a breeze.

Kamila
Those are actually very good. I’ve never heard those. But those are very true points there. So thank you so much for coming on. Katie.

Katee
Thank you so so much for having me. I so appreciate this. This was honestly so fun. Thank you so much. And I think what you’re doing is really, really helpful to students.

Kamila
Thank you very much. So have a good night.

Katee
Thank you. You too.

Kamila
That’s it for my interview with Katie if you have not checked out part one, make sure to do that. Also check out my blog, a college kid.com For more college related content on there. Next week, I’ll be releasing my interview with a current UVA Student University of Virginia. So subscribe so you do not miss that. But other than that, I hope to see you then