“Being a basketball player will actually probably help you while you shoot your film,” Guzzetti told me. This immediately caught me off guard, because for most of my life, I’ve regarded my athletic endeavors as at odds with my artistic pursuits: time and time again I’ve imposed limits on the latter in the name of the former.

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By this time, too, I saw my experience as a college athlete as a collection of temporary highs followed by vicious lows that I couldn’t process amidst five hours a day at the gym—on top of a STEM course load, multiple part-time jobs, and a struggle to experience Harvard outside of the athletic complex.

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Years of mental, physical, and emotional defeat over that once-precious orange ball eventually severed my identity from the sport and, capped by a career-ending injury, led to my departure from the program right before my senior season.