Whenever people ask me what I do in my free time I always have to come up with something like “watching YouTube” or “playing video games” because a lot of my time I’ve spent in life has been in a pool and there isn’t much else I have done. In almost every introduction or ice breaker I have I always have to say, “I swim”, because really, I do it a lot. I hate that I always have to have the same response, however I wouldn’t be in the pool so much if I didn’t like it. Practicing just to go just a couple tenths faster in a specific race may seem like something that wouldn’t be fun or seem like a high effort low reward task, but for some reason I keep doing it. The constant grind for something that may not happen, but you do it anyway so that it might just happen. The excitement of looking up at the scoreboard and seeing a time that you have been working towards for so long, in my experience, is one of the best feelings in the world. Perhaps that is the reason I put so many hours into the sport. What I’ve started to notice recently is that the habits created in the pool working towards a goal translates really well into doing things that aren’t just swimming. Whenever I think of something that I may want to do, whether it be school or career related or even selfish things, I find myself automatically being disciplined, competitive, tenacious, and all of the words that fit into that category. These factors etched into myself allow me to set myself up for success. I think whatever I do once I’m done with swimming all the time, I’ll be fine, and that’s because I swam for so long. So even though I always have to tell people, “yeah I just swim a lot”, it really is what I do and is the reason I am who I am.