A College Athlete Essays - DraftCarson Hill,

A College Athlete By Justin Helderman Imagine yourself, if you can, strapping up a helmet before the big game, stretching your legs out before the 600 meter rely, or taking a few warm up swings before you step up into the batter's box. There are probably a lot of things going through that stubborn head of yours. Now imagine those same things with the thought of having to think of how you will make time to study for the big biology exam the following day. All right now you can quit imagining things. Thousands of student athletes have to deal with this day in and day out. I am just a regular college student here at Appalachian, but if things would have gone differently I would have had a place on the sideline in Carter Finely Stadium. That gave me a flaming desire to find out how much harder it is to study, have a social life, be an athlete, and be successful at all three. I interviewed someone whom I call a good friend, Arron Dobbings from Nebraska. He will be the starting full back for the Mountaineers in the up coming season. I want to find out precisely how much more difficult it is to be a successful college athlete, in comparison to being a regular college student like myself. During the planning stages of this interview, I was having thoughts of long bus rides to and from the sporting events, long rigorous practices, and obscene amounts of make up work to finish when you get home. I started to tell myself that I could probably go right ahead and write this paper without taking any valuable time out of my schedule to do the interview. As soon as that thought crossed through the mounded up cob webs in my forsaken mind, a saying that my dad preached to me came following behind, If some thing is not worth doing right, it is not worth doing at all. I am sure everyone has heard that one. Guess what? I picked up the phone and called Arron. We decided to meet at a well-known hub here in Boone called Mackadoo's at six o'clock on the following Monday. Right after we ordered our dinner I went ahead and started asking the questions that I thought would give me the answers that I was looking for. Why else would I have set up this interview? My first questions were getting to know you questions or "Ice Breaker" if you will. I asked Arron, "Is Appalachian the first institution that you have attended?" With that one little question I found out that my interviewee had attended a small college in Nebraska called Dana. His one year there was the worst one year of his life it seemed. If he had it his way he would never go anywhere close to that little institution again. He went ahead and answered a few of the follow up questions that I had, without me even asking them, such as telling me that he started his football college career at Dana and that Dana is a Christian-based college that really doesn't care about sports, just books. After that one fallen from favor year at Dana he transferred to Appalachian. At the close of this drawn-out sem ester he will have completed his first year here, and he will be craving for the next to begin. Next, I wanted to find out what kinds of restraints are placed on a college athlete's social life. Arron was pretty eager to tell me about this, as if he wanted me to ask him about it. He started by telling me, "You should know that; I always am telling you; No, I have to get up early in the morning, or I can't go eat dinner, I have film session at 5:00." He began to show me through his own words how much less time he has to devote to his friends because of his commitment to the title "College Athlete". As we moved on through the interview I now wanted to find out about the hindrances on his studies. Arron is majoring in criminal justice, and let me tell you, with this man's stature, I would not want