The dedication required to balancing school work and practice is the most difficult part of being a student athlete. I find that student athlete proves to be harder than most people think it is. Everyone thinks that it is just an easy ride when you are an athlete at the University of Nebraska. The thing is, they could not be farther from the truth.
             I found it very difficult especially at the beginning of the year. I had to come in from 27 hours away, and I did not know anybody here. I not only had to get myself situated as far as classes went, but also meet new people. This was hindered by meetings that I had to attend to learn the NCAA regulations and to sign papers dealing with all the rules of being an athlete. Not only was all this going on, but conditioning had already started. I found I had very little extra time to do what I wanted to do: meet people. Finding classes the first day was difficult because of the constant rain, but I eventually found all of them. I just was finding that there was a lot more weight on my shoulders than there ever had been before. Like I had to balance all the new tasks in my life as well as start new relationships. I also had just broken up with my girlfriend of two years. I was starting to think that I would actually have to start trying harder.
             The biggest change I noticed from the start was the amount of freedom I had. If I wanted to stay up until three in the morning, there was nobody here who was going to tell me otherwise. The only problem I was having was I wanted to stay up this late, and I had to lift every morning at seven AM. Each night I seemed to be getting less and less sleep than the night before. I started meeting people on my floor and we all would stay up just finding out about each other. I was finding as the weeks went on that it was becoming difficult to function. I was becoming extremely tired and the practices just kept getting harder
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