We Division I athletes here get a lot of criticism for supposedly taking easy classes and majoring exclusively in political science. The reality is our academic lives here are stressful, too. We also work hard; we don’t just scoot by.

People seem to think we’re lazy just because we’re on the lacrosse team. But we’re no different than you. We can’t sit back and fail and let other people take over for us; we have to get up and grab life by the handlebars. We can’t just putter around all day; if we did that, we would crash and burn.

It may look like we’re in cruise control all the time, but sometimes even we have to tuck our sweatpants into our socks, park ourselves in the library, and rev up our brains. Our grades sometimes come to Razor™-thin margins, and it’s hard to get on a roll after that. But in the end, we’re just like everyone else. Just like you, we can hit a bump in the road, but we just have to motor on.

In doing anything to avoid those pesky N, Q, S, H, and Writing Intensive credits, you might think we’re taking the easy ride. But that’s not the truth. As good as you think we lacrosse players have it, college isn’t some joyride for us. We could have it a lot better; I mean, the lacrosse players at Syracuse get golf carts.