Getting Old

            My sophomore year the Reinhardt football team went 13-1. We were conference champions and lost to St. Francis in the semi-finals. This was a fun but tough year for me because I was expected to be in the starting rotation. One week before the first game, our team got an All-American transfer; a previous NFL prospect who ended up replacing my spot in the starting rotation. This was another time that I had to dig deep and stay true to my vision since in my head I felt like quitting. Because I was not in the starting rotation, I had to find a way to make myself useful to make the travel team.           Due to my size and strength, I was put in a special package for goal line or short yardage situations. My only job was to "kick out" the last man on the line of scrimmage to create a lane for the running back to score. I did this every game, and never missed a block. This one block to make took up every fiber of my exist...

            After the summer came my sophomore year of college when I began taking my classes even more seriously, trying to soak up every bit of knowledge I could. I was always the kid in the front row taking notes, while others would be on their phones or asleep. My friends never really cared about their grades, but I did. I knew that if I had a good GPA coming out of college as a student-athlete, an employer would recognize that. My desire to make good grades was inspired by the fact that it could help me in the future, but I also wanted to make my mother proud. My mother is an elementary school teacher and takes academics to heart. My GPA coming out of high school was 2.8. This drove my mother crazy because she knew that I could do better, and I did too. All I cared about was hanging out with my friends and winning football games on Friday nights.             One night, in particular, changed the way I felt about my...

            That summer, I worked for the local lawn service company. Although I did not feel like I was living up to my potential, I was making good money as a 19-year-old kid. On top of my work as a technician, I was also making sales to people in the community. All of my friends were making minimum wage, while I was making close to $20 an hour from my efforts in sales and lawn service production. This was because almost every day I was the first person to show up to the office in the morning to collect my orders and the last one to return in the evening. I remember my boss was always so confused with my drive to work and make money, compared to the other men twice my age I was working with. The significance of this summer came from my development and growth as a young adult. It did not go my way, but I kept a positive attitude and made the most of every day and never complained to anyone but myself.              I...

            All of my life I couldn't wait to graduate from college and get my dream job. It is surreal that the time has come, and I will graduate in May 2019. It seems as if everything I have done leading up to this point has prepared me for my future endeavors.             When I first got to Reinhardt University in August of 2015, I felt like I had a lifetime's worth of school and football ahead of me. Waking up at 5-6am everyday for weight training and football practice made time pass extremely slow. My 18-year-old self felt as if I would be living this life forever, and I would never have to grow up. The only thing I was worried about was my performance on the field, in the classroom, and hanging out with my newly acquired friends. The hardest decision in my day was trying to agree with my friends on what we would eat for dinner and who's dorm we would be hanging out in that night. As my freshman ye...