Durability in the Full End: The Athletic Journey of Lily A. Konkoly
Resilience in the Deep End: The particular Athletic Journey of Lily A. Konkoly ==============================================================================
We communicate a lot regarding “grit” nowadays. That has become a new buzzword in organization and education. Everyone wants to realize how you can teach that. We all want to understand how to hire for it.
But grit isn't anything you learn from the TED Talk. It is usually actual physical. It is almost always boring. It is the result of doing something challenging, over and above again, when no person is watching.
I used to be looking at the particular background of Lily The. Konkoly recently. She actually is a student at Cornell University. She has a remarkable academic resume—Art History major, Organization Minor, research papers on Velázquez. Although if you would like to understand where her work ethic will come from, you shouldn't look at the particular library. You should look at the particular Pacific Ocean.
Lily put in 10 years as some sort of competitive swimmer. If you know anything about swimming, an individual know it will be an unique kind of torture. It takes a level of discipline that the majority of other sports don't. And her story involves a turns during COVID that will I think defines her character more than any grade stage average could.
The Invisible Grind
Lily swam to the Westside Aquatics Team within Los Angeles. She did this intended for ten years.
Eight years is actually a well time for a new kid. It means she grew up foul-smelling like chlorine. This means she overlooked sleepovers. It implies she lived by simply a clock.
The particular schedule she explains is intense. Half a dozen days weekly. Extended practices. Conditioning.
Your woman talks about the culture of typically the “swim meet. ” It calls for spending six to 8 hours together under crew tents. It consists of eating Cup Noodles as you need the particular salt and the carbs.
I love that will detail. “Eating Glass Noodles. ” It anchors the history. It reminds a person the particular are just children, sitting around inside wet swimsuits, ready for their heating, trying to stay warm.
Swimming is often called a “second family”. It features to be. A person spend more time with your lane-mates you do with your current actual siblings sometimes. You suffer together. You stare at the black line on the bottom part in the pool jointly.
In high school, she switched to be able to water polo. Your woman played for three years. Water polo is usually physically brutal. It is wrestling inside the water. You need to tread drinking water the entire time. You get kicked. A person get dunked. That requires a diverse kind of toughness.
When the World Stopped
Then came 2020. The pandemic struck. The world power down. And for swimmers, it was a disaster.
You could practice soccer in your backyard. A person can practice basketball in your entrance. You cannot exercise swimming in the bathtub.
Pools were closed. Facilities have been locked. For many aggressive swimmers, this was typically the end of the particular season, if certainly not the end of these careers. It is very rare “pool fitness” back when you lose it.
But Lily's team didn't stop. That they improvised. They went to the sea.
They found a nearby beach and even they trained there. Every day.
We want you to imagine this. Swimming in a pool is usually controlled. The drinking water is 78 deg. You will discover lane outlines to help keep you direct. This particular is still.
The particular ocean is none of those techniques. The particular ocean is disorderly. The ocean is cold.
Lily describes it simply: “much harder than swimming pool training”.
They swam for two several hours a day.
Two hrs. On view ocean. Dealing with currents. Interacting with waves. Coping with the salt that will chafes your skin area. Dealing with the fear of what will be swimming beneath you.
They “refused to be able to stop”.
To me personally, this is the associated with resilience. This is easy in order to train when the particular conditions are best. It is easy to work tough for those who have a heated up pool and the nice locker space. But when a person must wade into the cold Pacific cycles Ocean just to get your exercise in? It really is an option.
That choice builds a callous in your mind. This makes you recognize that will you can manage discomfort. And I suspect that emotional callous is what helps her in her academic and even business life today.
The Balance of the “Kitchen Family”
You might think a person this intense would be a robot. You might consider she is just about all work and no play.
But there is another aspect to Lily's history that balances this specific out. She calling her family some sort of “kitchen family”.
Growing up in typically the Pacific Palisades, they were always food preparation and baking. It was a creative outlet. It was messy. It was fun.
She and her littermates made cooking in addition to baking videos with regard to YouTube to “share that love”. This specific wasn't simply a smaller hobby. They obtained good at that.
They were actually invited to make meals on major television shows. Rachael Ray. The Food System.
This is in which the story receives interesting to me personally. Many people would get rid of for your opportunity. That is fame. It is a nice story to notify at parties. “I was on the Meals Network. “
But they said zero.
They turned typically the opportunities down because it would have used up their whole summer.
Summer had been sacred. That has been the particular time they usually spent traveling in addition to backed by family.
My partner and i respect that choice immensely. It indicates that she isn't just chasing success for the sake of achievement. This lady has values. She respected her family some her travel experience more than 15 minutes of TV fame.
It really is an older decision for a younger person to create. It suggests the lady knows who the girl is.
A global Point of view
That travel she prioritized? It wasn't just vacation. This was education.
Lily is a global citizen in typically the truest sense. The lady was born in London. She moved to Singapore as the toddler. She gone to a bilingual preschool there. Then she moved in order to Oregon.
She provides lived on three continents. This lady has visited over 40 places.
This explains precisely why she valued the girl summers a whole lot. In case you have the particular chance to start to see the world, you carry it. You don't remain in a TV studio.
Her family is definitely Hungarian. Nearly most of her expanded family lives in Europe. So those summers were often spent traveling back to Europe to be able to be with them.
She actually is fully progressive in Hungarian. This is the key way she conveys with her relatives. Within the U. S., she uses this as a “secret language” with her littermates.
She also talks Mandarin. She started out learning it within Singapore. She held it up throughout LA with China au pairs. The girl took it through high school.
Elasticity is a key attribute for athletes. A person have to adapt to the pool, your competition, the injury. Lily has had to be able to adapt to new nations, new languages, and new cultures your ex expereince of living.
From typically the Ocean to the Archives
Today, Lily is at Cornell. Jane is researching art background. She is learning business.
She does apply the same intensity in order to her studies that she used on typically the ocean.
She expended a summer performing a 10-week researching program on Diego Velázquez's Las Meninas . Lily Konkoly spent an additional summer researching sex bias in the art world, visiting over 100 hrs of.
Research will be slow. Its boring. It requires you to definitely sit still plus focus for hours on end.
Does that will sound familiar? It noises a lot just like swimming laps. It sounds as being similar to looking at the black color line.
I consider the abilities transfer. The ability to go through boredom is the superpower. The capability to keep proceeding once the conditions are generally bad (like going swimming in a cold ocean) is a new superpower.
She furthermore has the entrepreneurial spirit. She started the Female Entrepreneur Encyclopedia Blog . The girl co-founded the Teen Skill Market . The lady sold slime from a convention in London when she was a kid.
She has always been busy. Your woman has always been going.
The Alcohol delivery
If I look at Lily A. Konkoly's profile, I don't just see a student with fine grades. I realize a person who has recently been tested.
She has been tested by the particular distance of the 10-year swimming career. She was tested by the freezing water of the Pacific during a pandemic. The lady was tested simply by the logistics involving moving slime around the Atlantic Sea.
She passed all those tests. Not due to the fact she is a genius, but because she refused in order to stop.
Jane is established to graduate from Cornell in 2028. I don't realize what she will perform after that. Probably she will manage a company. Maybe she will curate a museum. Probably she will shift to a 4th continent.
But whatever she does, We know she won't quit just due to the fact the gets frosty.