Omelets After Lift

How four years of Division I golf taught me to reject Ivy League utilitarianism

William Kim/Columbia Sundial

If you stop by the second floor of Ferris Booth Commons around 8:30 a.m. on a Tuesday or Thursday, you’ll probably hear raucous laughter spilling from a group of girls gathered at one of the long tables. If you’re curious, that’s the Columbia women’s golf team, devouring omelets after lift in an attempt to make it to an 8:40 a.m. class on time.

As co-captain of the team, I suppose it’s my responsibility to apologize for disturbing the tranquility of the morning—but I won’t. Apologizing would suggest remorse, but truthfully, breakfast after lift is one of the moments I look forward to most during the week.

I can’t pinpoint exactly why I treasure this brief period so much; it could be that I’m quite hungry after working out. It could also be the vibes: Ferris receives a lot of sunlight in the mornings. Or it could be that I simply enjoy spending the little reprieve I have between lift and classes with my teammates. All are probably true.

Perhaps that’s why I’m always taken aback when, after describing my schedule to friends, acquaintances, or people I meet in passing, some inevitably ask, “Why don’t you just quit?”

Admittedly, my tone betrays my frequent exhaustion. I’d be lying if I said I enjoy every moment of being on the team. Three lifts a week, plus Pilates, team meetings, mental performance sessions, team practice, individual practice, travel, and tournaments are a lot to handle—not to mention the fact that we compete in both the fall and spring, and take on the same course load as every other Columbia student. Yet, despite the immense amount of time and energy required by my golf commitments, it has never occurred to me that quitting was an option.

What’s concerning is the implication behind the question: If you’re unhappy, feel challenged, or experience discomfort, just walk away from whatever you’re doing! This premise completely ignores the fact that quitting has ramifications that extend far beyond the individual. A team is a web of interdependence that involves coaches, trainers, teammates, and even future recruits; by committing to play a sport for Columbia, student-athletes are signing up for what they know will be a demanding lifestyle. Abandoning that commitment because the reality of that lifestyle suddenly hits is not a neutral decision: It is a betrayal of the trust that others have invested in you and their expectation that you will bring your all to support the team.

The data shows this struggle extends beyond Columbia. The Harvard Crimson published an article in 2020 revealing that “one in four Class of 2020 athletes quit varsity teams during their time at Harvard.” Similarly, Brown University reported in 2016 that roughly 30 percent of its student-athletes had done the same. These athletes cited injuries, shifting interests and priorities, mental health, and a diminished love for their sport as some of the reasons for quitting.

I’ve had three teammates quit for at least one of the reasons listed above, and I myself have experienced a plethora of these challenges; anyone who looks at my scoring average in college will observe that I’ve struggled quite a bit compared to my junior golf days. As such, I lost a lot of the joy I once felt while competing. Golfweek, which was once to me as The Wall Street Journal is to an investment banker, became just another publication; Sunday nights spent glued to the TV watching the final stretch of a golf tournament turned into Sunday nights spent reading a book or watching YouTube; and personal hardships in my family made me question whether the hours spent practicing were worth sacrificing the time I could have spent with loved ones instead.

Yet, even at my lowest, I’ve never considered any of the challenges I’ve faced reason enough to quit; I was always taught to persevere no matter the circumstances, with career-ending injuries being the only exception. Any athlete will tell you that playing a sport cultivates grit—the strength of character and resolve to endure the hard and unpredictable. So what becomes of this “grit” when athletes arrive at college?

There are many answers to this question. Some recruits underestimate the demands of being a Division I athlete at an academically rigorous institution. Others use their sport merely as a ticket into the Ivy League. However, it seems to me that the issue lies in the culture.

Columbia is known as a premier research institution; the University clearly values academics and career achievement over athletics, a sentiment reflected in the student body. Consider the last time you attended a Columbia football game—I’m sure many have never even been to one. But walk into a career fair, and I’d hazard a guess you’ll find far more people in attendance than you would in the stands of any sporting event.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing: A good education should help students find a job suited to their interests, and I’d argue Columbia does that about as well as it can. However, the utilitarian nature of this culture—the constant evaluation of an activity based on whether it “pays off”—creates a narrow definition of what is worth doing. If playing a Division I sport doesn’t boost your resume, make you happier, or advance your career trajectory, then why bother? If the goal is to optimize for tangible achievement, quitting is the most logical choice.

However, I believe that logic misses something essential.

Some of the most meaningful moments of my college career emerged from situations where quitting would have been the “rational” decision. I once woke up on the final day of a tournament in intense pain as a result of severe bloating and nausea—I couldn’t even get out of bed. However, with the help of my assistant coach, I made it to the course twenty minutes before my tee time, and scraped together a 75 (+2). As it turns out, my score was good enough to contribute toward the team total. Another time, I had six midterms in seven days, with three days of tournament golf included in that time frame. I was so stressed that I brought my notes to the golf course and studied between shots. And, in my freshman year, I admitted to accidentally recording a lower score for myself than what I had actually shot, resulting in my disqualification from the individual standings. I was devastated by my mistake, but that didn’t matter; I had to keep my emotions in check because I was still competing for the team score the next day.

While I place immense value on the opportunities I have to practice persistence, it is not the result of my persistence that matters most, but the “why” that enables me to continue moving forward. For most of my life, any perseverance I demonstrated was fueled by my desire for achievement. I wanted to win, to have the best-looking swing, to strike the ball better than everyone else. It was, in every sense, about me.

The beauty of college golf is that it introduces the notion of team to a sport that is, by design, self-centered. So, when my performance in college faltered for prolonged periods—and with it the purpose I had long attached to playing—I found myself turning toward something larger than my own achievement: My teammates. Had I fixated only on my own frustration during moments of struggle, I doubt I would have had the mental strength to continue. But even when the temptation to throw in the towel reached its peak, the prospect of disappointing my teammates was a far more unbearable reality.

To get into Columbia, you have to be selfish to a certain degree. Choosing to uphold the commitment of being an athlete at an Ivy League school, then, is a contrarian act precisely because it resists the self-centered pull of utilitarian mathematics. It demands loyalty when desertion would be the easier, more rational choice. It asks us to prioritize others over ourselves, even if the utility we derive from our athletic endeavors may appear, on paper, to be a net loss.

The value of being a college athlete, then, must lie apart from the utilitarian evaluation of happiness and achievement, because happiness and achievement in sports fluctuate and are often fleeting. The true value of college athletics—in being a part of a team and sacrificing convenience for resilience—is the meaning we derive from upholding our responsibilities to others. It lies in the discipline of showing up to lift on time, in giving our best at practice even when we aren’t at our best, and in knowing that we are there for one another.

It’s hard to fight against the pull of the utilitarian mindset, especially when it may feel like we’re surrounded by people who are light-years ahead in terms of academic and career achievements. However, I think we vastly underestimate the importance of engaging in activities that allow us to find meaning in situations where we are not always happy, comfortable, or gaining something for ourselves.

So when people ask, “Why don’t you just quit?” I know they’re not really asking about golf. They’re articulating a worldview shaped by Columbia’s culture, which measures everything by its utility. The blinders imposed by this worldview may yield a certain level of “success” for those who adhere to it, but it comes at a cost. Analyzing everything in terms of its net tangible benefit to yourself creates a myopic version of reality that does little to encourage the pursuit of what is meaningful: honest and purposeful work, developing close relationships, and choosing to display courage in the face of difficulty.

What people don’t see is the van rides to practice filled with laughter, or the thrill of watching a teammate sink a putt on the 18th hole. They don’t see that the joy I find in eating omelets after lift with my teammates is the sort of irreproducible joy that forms only through shared trials, tribulations, and triumphs. It’s a fulfillment unhindered by performance metrics or career anxieties—one I wouldn’t give up for anything.

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Ms. Shen is a senior at Columbia College studying financial economics and computer science. She is a deputy editor for Sundial.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.