TLU Transition

I have recently been here at Texas Lutheran University for my first official month. Believe it or not, I have been asked on MULTIPLE occasions how I have been settling in since I have been here. Honestly, I do not even know how to answer that question. Besides the obvious adversities that come with the transition from high school to college work, there are other things that take getting used to. Lucky for me I knew my roommate ever since I was about five years old so I get to skip the cries for help and privacy. My biggest problem so far in college is ignoring the distractions that appear in front of me. My lobby that I enjoy to study in happens to overlook the window to the freshly made game room in my residence hall. Besides that I have the unlimited meal plan so it seems that every free second I have is spent either eating in the dining hall, or the student center snack shack. Also the fact that it is hard to ignore the fact that every time I choose to sit down and work on my studies every single other person I see is doing something more interesting than the work I am focused on. Despite all of the negative points of transition, there are some positives. My biggest "like" so far in college has to be the fact that I am on my own time. One of my "many" good qualities is my time management. So the fact that I was able to pick my class times was a beautiful thing. Another positive at TLU is Study Hall for the football players. I have a definite love/hate relationship with study hall. without it I know that 85% of my homework would never even be a thought in my head until it was asked from me by a professor, but during it my mind becomes fatigued from the amount of work I force it to accomplish in an hour and a half. I know that only being here a month means that I am still in store for many more experiences, and I know that my transition is still incomplete. Though I am still immature in my college experiences, I feel that within my time here my transition to the college life is a good one and I hope that it continues to stay on that path.

The Mental Game

You hear people talk about being "mentally present" all of the time. Being an athlete I have heard this term way too many times in the passed fourteen years. It started when I was young listening to my dad screaming at me to focus, then I got a little older and my teachers and coaches would ask me "where is your head at today"? Now I am to the point in my life where I have to tell myself to be mentally strong. There has been many times in my life where my physical performance has faultered due to the fact that my mind is not in the same place that I am. My coach at the moment likes to tell us that "our minds and [butts] need to be in the same place" wherever I am physically needs to be what my mind is focused on. When I hear the term "Mental Game" I invision a competition of the mind. To me competition always has two opposing forces, even when you are competing with yourself you are still competing against two parts of you. Mental games can be between two physical forces or against the two forces of yourself that you create. So my mental game is always against myself. I do occasionally like to have a battle of whit between a deserving foe, but a true mental game is a battle against myself. My opposing forces are my body and my mind. Being a long time athlete I understand that your body shuts down faster when you begin to doubt yourself. So it is vitally important that I strengthen my mind for whatever I choose to do, almost like training for a game. I do this so that when my body becomes tired I can "trick" my body into having a little extra than it has had before. This is the case for more than just sports, it is the case with school work as well. When I am studying for hours on end because I have procrastinated my way into a midnight cram session of fifty pages of reading, I am able to stay focused if my mind is trained to do so. When it comes to my "Mental Game" I train my mind so that it is able to win the competition with my body. My Mental Game is a constant battle to focus on whatever my task at hand is, so that I may become better in all aspects of life that I am performing.