Productivity is key to surviving high school, especially for student athletes. With balancing practices, school, homework, and other extra-curriculars, it is crucial that we manage our time in a way that allows for assignments to be completed with the highest degree of excellency, while also leaving time to enjoy life with family and friends. Personally, I have felt like the past few months have flown by. How is it already November? I have been scared that I have been so busy worrying about the future and working towards it, that I don’t realize my senior year of high school is happening right in front of me, so I have searched for a few things have helped me increase my productivity in order to give myself more time to stop and smell the roses. Here are the things I found that have worked the best for me! Hopefully these can help some of you enjoy your senior year a little more too! 

1. Go to the library 

• This one is probably the best advice I can give you. I have always been someone that has done my homework at home in my room, but this year it just hasn’t been working for me. I’m guessing this is due to the fact that I spent most of my time there during quarantine and it’s no longer engaging. Not to mention that I have two younger sisters that are the farthest thing from quiet. When I know that I need to get a lot of work done, I will go to the library after cross country practice and work until it closes (9 pm), which allows me to go home and get enough sleep with a little extra time to do something fun. Usually, I am able to get almost all of my work done in this amount of time because everything I need is in front of me, and I am not spending time getting distracted by a messy room or the happenings of my household. It also gives me a comfortable, quiet environment where I know I know I can focus. Not to mention it makes going home feel like a reward rather than a chore since all my work is complete before I step foot into my bedroom. 

1. Make 3 lists 

• This one has saved me from the inevitable feeling of laziness that I get at least once or twice a week. To combat a bad or exhausting day, I make 3 lists every night before I go to bed. One for things I can do if I am feeling extremely productive, one for if I’m feeling stressed or less productive, and finally one for when all I want to do is sleep. This not only helps me prioritize things that I need to complete on a daily basis, but it allows me to give myself breaks when I need them, while still being able to stay on top of my busy schedule. I highly recommend trying this if you are feeling like college applications have put you in an unproductive mindset!

1. Do 1 fun thing instead of homework per week

• I have gotten my friends to jump in on this idea. We all agreed that we want to have more than all the big senior events when we remember senior year, so each week we pick something smaller (but still fun) to do on a weeknight. We have gone to Mr. NNHS, bought pints of ice cream to eat after cross country practice, and gone shopping for random things. This helps break up the monotony of the school week, while still giving us plenty of time to complete our assignments. It is also just a great way to make those small memories that you can look back on with a smile. 

Overall, I have found these three things to be very helpful in increasing my productivity in even the most hectic of weeks. I hope they can help you as much as they have helped me stay on top of my work! Don’t forget life is what happens when you are busy making other plans, so don’t let the joys of senior year pass you by!

For the past 4 years I have spent 2 hours 6 days a week running with my NNHS teammates during cross country. I have indulged in the traditions of pasta parties, pumpkin carving, and every pre-race tradition that the program has to offer. This week I put on our bright orange jersey for the last time as a cross country athlete. I must say I shed some tears, as this team has basically been my family for the past 4 years. While I still have track season to go, I want to indulge in some nostalgic memories of mine from the past 4 seasons. These stories, laughs, and memories are what have made my high school experience so special. So without further ado, here is my cross country appreciation post with some of my favorite memories!

First up is Freshman year! The biggest meet that Naperville North hosts is called Twilight.

 This race is my personal favorite because almost all of the races are run in the dark! Freshman year was especially unique because of the sunset that covered the sky that night. This picture is probably my favorite of all of them because I remember it so vividly. I am not only going to miss this meet, but I am going to miss sprinting around the course cheering for my teammates! Twilight showed me how supportive everyone is on the team and reminded me to stay in the moment and realize how special a single sunset can really be.

Next is sophomore year! This picture is from when we won State for the 4th consecutive

 time. It was a really close race, and we didn’t know if we had won until almost 20 minutes after the race had ended. While I did not run in the race myself, this day showed me how strong of a bond that all of my teammates and I have. The seven people that ran that race did so knowing they had a team of 60 other girls supporting them, and that every single person on the team had worked for that trophy. This reminds me of how cross country conditioned me to work as hard and push others at the same time in order to not only achieve my goals, but help others around me reach theirs.

In spite of Covid, cross country still managed to weave its way into my Junior year. This picture was taken when the team carved pumpkins to line the NNHS course. Due to many teams refusing to host meets, several of the races were forced to be held at North, and everyone was begging for something to change up the monotonous course. This resulted in our annual pumpkin carving tradition to be put on display!  I carved a runner into mine and my friend, Anna carved in the letters XC for cross country. This still stands as the best pumpkin I have ever carved (haha I’m not very artistic), and this year showed me how to deal with adversity in even the most unprecedented of times.

Finally, Senior year has definitely been my favorite year of cross country! This picture is at the top of a mountain in Eagle Harbor, Michigan. My teammates and I ran 4 miles up this massive hill, and it was by far the hardest race I have ever run; however, it is one of the best memories that I have because my coach, Mr. Iverson did it with us after having a double knee replacement a year prior. It really reminded me of how tough and relentless cross country has taught me to be. 

This sport has given me more memories than I could have ever imagined. It has given me friends I will never forget, priceless laughs, and lessons in self-motivation and determination that will go unmatched by anything else I will ever encounter. It fostered my passion for running and encouraged me to live in the moment, work hard, and do what I love, so from the bottom of my heart, thank you NNHS cross country for some of the best people, lessons, and memories that I will never forget!

“You only need the light when it’s burning low, only miss the sun when it starts to snow,”. This chorus taken from “Let Her Go”, a popular song by Passenger, disguises a breakup as a more relatable life lesson to listeners of all ages. The lyrics convey how people often take their present situation for granted by always wishing for a better circumstance. This lesson pops into the lives of many people, whether they realize it themselves or are repeatedly reminded by friends and family; however, this numbing repetition often pushes that scenario in one ear out the other, until provoked by larger changes. Personally, those changes emerged on March 13th, 2020 and continue to taint my everyday life, a whirlwind of normal activities now filled with Covid precautions. 

As 8th hour concluded that Friday in March, I collected my things and nudged my way through the chaotic hallways of North in order to head to the locker room to get dressed for track practice. As everyone remembers, those frenzied corridors were not only due to the fact that it was Friday, rather the district had announced school was shutting down for two weeks because of a new concept called the Corona Virus. Expecting to stretch normally, I changed clothes and headed upstairs to the athletic hallway, but my teammate, Anna, flagged me down and pointed to the large gathering of teammates surrounding my coach. Little did I know this would be the final team meeting of my sophomore track season. Usually, practice was never cancelled. The track and cross country teams’ will to improve in both running and life reaches farther than things like rain or snow, and we take pride in that, even by calling ourselves all-weather women; therefore this determination only intensified the feeling of shock caused by all the immediate cancellations. The track team’s ability to work together in such an individual sport is another strength of ours. It is a rare occurrence that Mr. Iverson gives a speech without explaining that “Amazing things happen when the eightieth person on the team is working with and to be the seventy ninth person and when the seventy ninth is working to be the seventy eighth…”. This meeting was no exception. “You all know a main part of our mission statement is working together to make each other better; however, we have never had this situation before, so it will be difficult, but we have to figure out a way to work together without being together,” Mr. Iverson said, laughing at the irony of his statement. My friends and I exchanged concerned glances due to the fact that our strong team unity had somehow been dismantled. 

Eventually, those two weeks turned into three months. I originally assumed that upholding my motivation would be simple; however, this was far from correct. As I ran down the streets of my neighborhood, the pounding of my feet became louder and louder with each day that passed where I didn’t have anyone with which to run. I found myself surprised with the amount of self doubt I was experiencing. I realized that I was only focusing on things that were going wrong, like the inability to hit paces or psyching myself out, rather than what was going well. Without someone there saying, “You got this!” or “Stay strong!”, I discovered that nothing came close to the encouragement of teammates to extract me from that mindset. Self doubt proved to me that I allowed that appreciation for my teammates slip by in the monotony of in-person practice, and now those opportunities to express it had disappeared. Overall, this unprecedented part of my life opened my eyes to the fact that I can’t overlook the impact of a “Stick with me, I know you can” from a teammate because that is what generates positive workouts and environments. More holistically, I can’t focus on the “Sun when it starts to snow” or the “Light when it’s burning low”. I have to appreciate what is going well in that moment because those things not only assist one in overcoming challenges, but are the aspects that are greatly missed when they fade away.

I think we can all agree that Covid taught us something about ourselves. Personally, it showed me how every moment is a gift, and I need to treat life that way. Especially with Senior year flying by, it can be easy to get wrapped up in the stress of college applications or the crazy amount of homework that everyone is dealing with, but if Covid has taught me anything, it is that I should strive to realize that I am going to miss those moments once they are gone. My Senior year mindset has been boiled down to this: the goal isn’t to just push through to graduation, rather it is to make myself realize that I am going to miss sitting in classes with my friends or going to football games while I am actually experiencing those situations because that is how to guarantee the best memories with no regrets.

You could say Nike is at the center of the professional and collegiate athletic world. Jerseys, spikes, cleats, and even socks are decorated with that famous swoosh. Most athletes dream of gaining a sponsorship from this company and living out their dreams of playing the sport that they have dedicated their lives to, but my question is would as many people support Nike if they knew that they cut the salaries of their female athletes when they become pregnant? 

More specifically, in 2019, even the most decorated female track and field athlete could not transcend this trap. Allyson Felix had won 9 Olympic medals, 6 of them being gold, yet Nike still decided to cut her salary by a whopping 70% when negotiating her contract after they found out she was pregnant with her daughter Cameron. Nike implied that their justification for the reduction was that Felix had a smaller chance of her regaining her athletic prowess after pregnancy; however, there was and is no science to back this up. In fact, there have been countless times where female athletes have successfully proven that pregnancy does not limit their physical capabilities, even with the complex changes in their bodies. Some quick examples are, “Track and field stars including [Allyson] Felix, Nia Ali and Jamaica’s Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce [who] all stormed to victory with world championship gold after becoming mothers: Ali in the 100-meter hurdles, 16 months postpartum; Fraser-Pryce in the 100 meters, two years postpartum.” (Tsui, Labors of Love). Does Nike just not have faith in their athletes? Is the financial drawback really so great, that they have to rob some of the greatest female athletes of the money that is going towards the new financial responsibility of a child? Are athletes just something that they can replace when they burn out like a light bulb? This doesn’t sound like a company I would want to represent after dedicating my life to playing a sport, even if they have popular apparel and dominate the sports’ clothing world. 

Felix thought the same thing, so she left Nike. That same year, she joined Athleta (a female founded athletic wear company) , and refocused her energy to not only competing, but empowering young female athletes and mothers all around the globe through the brand. Moreover, she gained 2 spots on 2020 Team USA in the 400 and 4×400 relay. Not only did she qualify, but she earned 2 more medals to add to her collection, one gold and one bronze. While Athleta did provide her with the sponsorship for clothing, Felix was still left without a running shoe provider, and with Nike dominating the track and field world in terms of trainers, spikes, and more, she was left stranded; therefore, so she decided to start her own shoe company to produce her own pair of running spikes and shoes, which are now also being sold to the general public. 

Needless to say, I think Nike lost way more than they would have even if Felix hadn’t gained her prowess back after having her daughter. Their unfair assumptions cost them a leader, motivator, athlete, and most importantly, a mother. Felix now utilizes her self-made platforms to share how her daughter has driven her to become the even better athlete and woman she is today. This proves that doubts towards athletes’ physical and mental abilities, especially pregnant females, should NEVER justify a pay cut. You may be wondering what the solution is to getting Nike to fund success stories like Felix’s that come from having faith in athletes. First, knowledge is power, so reading about things like this and finding brands that emphasize athletic, female empowerment is a start. As for Nike, I believe the solution to rightfully and respectfully paying their maternal athletes lies in a little saying of theirs. I believe it is something along the lines of: Just Do It.

For as long as I can remember, I have been obsessed with bright colors. Something about the purple purse my sister had when she was four or the neon orange t-shirt worn by my cousin for a field day at school always excited me. Bright colors brought life to anything dull and could transform moods with a single glance. It is not surprising that this influenced what I picked off the library shelves as a young child when my mother would take me. I judged books by their covers, only wanting to pick the picture books with the neon pink princess or electric blue turtle. I would not necessarily even read the books, I would just look at the pictures. If younger me was in charge, this was the way things would have stayed; however, one library trip in particular changed this habit.

While I don’t remember my exact age, this occurred around the time when I was being prompted by my teachers to start reading chapter books and record reading logs. I hated reading logs. My mom would give me a timer and only when it had sounded was I allowed to stop reading. The minutes wouldn’t go fast enough. All I wanted to do was get back to playing with my Barbies and American Girl Dolls. That was until this one library trip. My mom discovered a book called Ruby the Red Fairy and told me that I should read it. It was part of the series called the Rainbow Magic Fairies, a small collection of beginner’s chapter books entailing the adventures of fairies to stop an evil villain. There were at least 20 of the books on that shelf and every single one was a different color; therefore, my interest had peaked. I checked out the first three in the series and went home. 

To my surprise, there were no pictures in those books. Younger Macy was convinced that there was no way a book could be fun and interesting without imaged. After complaining to my mother about this very fact, I reluctantly agreed to read the first 10 pages because again, I had another reading log due the next day. That night I read more than I ever had before. I had truly learned what reading was: Imagining stories in your head. My mom couldn’t take the book away. I finished it in two days, only to find a cliffhanger awaiting. I read the whole series over the next few years of elementary school.

As I reflect on what I once thought was my mother’s pointless trick to get a young child to make the transition from picture books to chapter books, I now realize that this transformed me into the reader I am today. I switched from someone who looked for external color to someone who was excited to explore the internal colors that a text could offer. Reading gave me a chance to not just see color, but it prompted me to create a technicolor world in my imagination that just happened to involve the setting, characters, and theme of what I was reading. Even today, I still find texts with strong imagery the most interesting. While my imaginative process may have strayed away from the rainbows and fairies, my love for taking a story and letting it play vividly in my head has and will continue to influence the way I read throughout all my present and future English classes.

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