This week I chose to read the New York Times article, “For World’s Top Gymnast, a Body in Motion and a Mind at Rest.” I am not a big sports fan, but I did competitive gymnastics for many years so this caught my attention. The article was about the 18-year-old U.S. gymnast Simone Biles who has won 14 medals overall. It was a personal story about the stress she is dealing with and how she maintains her composure under the overwhelming pressure that she has to always win.

While Simone and I have different goals, I can still understand what she may be going through. I am under a lot of pressure here at Ole Miss to score high on every test, have a job, and also participate in leadership and extracurricular activities. I have a lot of anxiety, so sometimes it is hard to deal with all of these. When a test is coming up or I am stressed out, it is all too easy to start overthinking and start panicking. The article described how she kept a book with her with a list of goals. However, the goals were only about improving certain things, not goals about winning all of the medals. This really stuck out to me and made me reflect on all of the goals I currently have, and made me re-think some of them. In my biology class for example, instead of worrying about making an A I’m going to focus on keeping up with the readings and following my study schedule. While Simone and I may be different, we have the same fears and I can relate to a lot of the struggles she is currently dealing with.