Questions for the Alumni...

What do you wish you had known as a firstyear student at UMass?

DH: That hedonism is not a great model for success, and that college is supposed to be more than just one big party

SE: This sounds obvious but I wish I had known how strong the correlation was between showing up, doing the work, and having success. It was very tempting and scarily easy to decide to miss a class or an assignment. In High School, I never missed class but it almost seemed predetermined what each student would get for a grade. Once I got to UMASS, I realized the Professors were not interested in keeping students in their buckets but wanted to show them that they could do it and that they could learn it. I remember thinking “Wow these professors just give you the test answers”, or is that what teaching was?

BOQ: Don’t assume that you are important just because you are a D1 athlete. Your passion and skill to get you to this point is commendable and outstanding; however my advice would be to not let athletics alone define you. Use the diversity in this great University to get to know new people that can enlighten your life. Learn how to connect with people outside of athletics, ask them about their life and experiences, and you will be amazed at how your confidence and interpersonal skills will help you enrich your life!

DH: I can’t answer this, as it, as a lawyer might say, presumes a fact not in evidence. Had I known then what I now know, my answer would be, to keep a balance between academic work and athletics, rather than letting athletics dwarf and subsume the academics I suppose that my best strategy was to recognize after sophomore year that things weren’t working out on the trajectory I’d hoped for, so I took a year off, traveling across the country with another friend who doing the same. It was during that year that I ended up reading the books that I had been assigned in my first two years, and found my interests in academic topics rekindled, leading to a great final two years