BY ANDREW GREENBLATT

In print | Published September 10, 2009

Sunday morning: as the hazy view of my pillow and blankets begins to take clear shape and my body slowly realizes it’s no longer asleep, the dull and lethargic fog of my hangover creeps in. I don’t even know myself. During the week I wake up at 8:30 a.m. pretty much every day. I spring out of bed and parade myself to class with the same zest and gusto of Spongebob Squarepants.

But today I’m not ready and rearin’ to go. As I laze back onto my pillows and crunch on my breakfast of potato sticks and Doritos, my resemblance is closer to that of Patrick Star. I wish I could say that this break in character was simply an aberration, that it’s just the first week of school and that I wanted to go out and have a little fun, catch up with my friends and relax, but my Sunday sloth has become more routine than I’d like it to be.

People drink for a lot of different reasons – I know that the liquid courage definitely helps me on the dance floor, and I wouldn’t be caught dead in Paces without at least a buzz – but it seems like athletes have more reasons than most.

Whether it’s team bonding, celebrating a victory, trying to forget a defeat or just letting off steam from the chaotic schedule that being a student-athlete at Swarthmore demands, on the surface, an athlete’s decision to drink looks justified. But I want to propose a new outlook.

I’m not here to lecture on the dangers of drinking and the social pressures of a college lifestyle. This isn’t a high school health class, and for the most part, everyone here is a responsible adult who is completely capable of handling him or herself. We’re all very smart people, but we’re also human beings, and unfortunately, human nature is not on the side of being a serious athlete.

Let’s take a look at some of the awful things that have happened to athletes recently: we’ve had Plaxico Burress shoot himself in the leg, Michael Vick get caught financing a dog fighting ring, Donte Stallworth kill someone while driving drunk and Michael Beasley get caught with marijuana and sent to rehab. There are countless other examples of athletes doing equally puzzling things that cause them to miss games and lose millions of dollars. Every year, another athlete is throwing away his or her career due to bad choices and simply forgetting how valuable and fleeting athletic talents are.
If it’s easy for someone like Vick, who had close to $50 million in endorsements and contracts and a legitimate shot at the Hall of Fame, to forget how much is at stake, then it’s natural for your average Division III athlete to do the very same thing. For most of us, however, it’s a slower demise that creeps in through poor habits and a drift into the party style of an average college kid.

All we need is a little awareness.

It’s always easier to fit in than to stand out, so the first thing that we, as athletes, need to be aware of is that maintaining the lifestyle of a committed athlete is not easy. The amount of time athletes put into their sports is ridiculous, and the stresses of a season can be debilitating. I believe that there’s no combination of time, effort and emotion that even comes close to that involved in playing a college sport. It’s a challenge to be different.

So keep in mind while reading the rest of this article (while maybe even putting some of my ideas into practice) that it’s just not easy – plain and simple.

Think of the odds of going from Division III athletics to playing professionally. I don’t have an exact figure, but they hover somewhere around impossible. That means that as I write this, I only have three more years of competitive basketball left in my life, and many of you have less time than that. College is the time of your lives in many ways – athletic competition being one of them – and time flies. There’s a very short window for us to achieve our dreams athletically because unlike most of our aspirations, athletic ones have an expiration date.

“I am committed to making my time at Swarthmore College the best I can possibly make it. I will show up to practices, classes and workouts with the attitude of constant improvement. I plan to leave with clarity as to who I am as a person, a player and a leader, which will enable me to freely and fully throw myself into basketball and into life!”

Next, I put it somewhere I can see it every day. I’m reading my commitment statement constantly to make sure that every day pushes me closer to my aspirations as a player and a person. I need the constant reminder because it is human nature to forget about aspirations and to just do what’s easy. The challenge is to be more noble-minded than your feelings and urges.

The next step is to constantly be asking yourself the question, “Am I living according to my aspirations?” because having ambitious dreams isn’t really all that special. There are a lot of people who aspire to big dreams. Practicing and living according to that dream on a daily basis is what’s really special.

Life is a game of habits, and this technique will help improve your habits and keep you focused. Why do you think I wrote this column? Now the whole school knows my commitment statement.
I’m naked now, but more importantly, I’m accountable.

Over a thousand people know what I’m committed to and can call me out if I stray (which I undoubtedly will, because it’s only human nature), which brings me to the final step of this process of habitual development: share. Share, share, share! The more people who know what you’re committed to, the better. Think of sharing your commitment statement as hiring a referee. Empower someone you know to make sure you live according to your aspirations and change your habits. Life is a game of habits, so make your habits good ones. Good luck and have fun enjoying the fruits of your commitments. I’m sure they taste better than beer.

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