The Decision

A group of top Midwest juniors are following their own path this season, diverging from the tradition of going straight onto college but instead concentrating their life on training (and racing) full-time. The team includes State champion Ben Saxton, along with fellow Minnesotans Jan Ketterson, Zach Goldberg, and Jake Brown. With the exception of Jake, all have delayed entry into college in order to chase their dreams of being the best Nordic Ski racers in the country and have been living in the northwoods near Hayward, training under the guidance of Bill Pierce, FAST Performance Training.

Saxton will be sharing his experiences this season as he trains and races across the country and hopefully the world. His previous articles highlighted their recent adventures in Alberta, Canada. This article attempts to step back, providing some insight into his decision to take this training path. -- Ed.

This year my teammates/roommates and I decided to take a post-high school (PG) year to focus on training and racing as skiers. We all experienced many of the same feelings about the decision but also many different ones, and because of that, the things I’m going to talk about will all be from my own perspective to avoid speaking for anyone.

On the day college began for all of my fellow high school graduates, I was in a cabin. On the day the first midterms came, I was doing an overdistance workout. Sometimes it’s hard not to feel like my classmates are leaving me behind. But I think that a lot of life can be perceived as being left behind whether it’s being left by friends, or not getting to do the same things as everyone else. But the key word there is “perceived.” One of my favorite teachers in high school, Mr. Pothen, told me that life was 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it. Though that saying can be found in almost every high school in America somewhere, it does not lessen its significance. I may not be experiencing what everyone else is, but when I really think about it, there’s no way I’m getting left behind.

I think school is really important and my parents do as well, so it is hard to sit and know that my classmates are in lab or writing papers. But I am learning things as well. It’s hard to move in without parents for the first time. All the things your Mom and Dad did without you even noticing now fall to you. Your finances, laundry, food, shopping are all in your lap, and there’s no one to blame but yourself if you’re not happy with your situation. That reality forces you to adjust accordingly and to learn how to do what you have to do. It is its own kind of lab, and the experiments can teach you a lot more about yourself and your living than titrating an acid so you can discover its molecular formula.

It’s similarly hard to watch my friends enjoy all the parties and social bonuses of college while I sit in the cabin doing things excruciatingly less exciting. But I again think back to Mr. Pothen’s adage and when I have the right mindset, the nightly game of hearts becomes pretty awesome, movies become way more exciting, and books (*gasp*), yes, books are incredibly fulfilling. And I think that as long as I see them that way, they’re pretty awesome things to do.

When I keep things in perspective everything I do makes total sense to me. But the hard part about a PG year isn’t convincing yourself, it’s convincing others to believe in it too. Lots of people understand from an athletic standpoint why it’s advantageous and why an athlete would do it. But the hard part is when people realize that no college right now means not getting closer to a degree right now. And unfortunately America has a really intense societal proclivity towards college degrees. That’s not to say that everyone without one is labeled as a failure, far from it. But it is hard to deny the pressure upon a student to immediately enter college regardless of whether or not that’s the right thing to do; whether or not that will benefit the student. I think that the reality of most people’s college careers is that they had a severe adjustment period their freshman year that affected studies and sports and anything they were involved in. Many adults tell me that that is the reason they think the PG year is a good idea to “learn how to live so when you hit campus, you go hard at school and don’t also have to figure out how to live.”

I could write for pages about why this is the right choice for someone in my position to make, but I think for me there’s one that stands out among all the others.

Mr. Pothen’s end of the semester lecture was always a reading of his favorite poem “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. It reads:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both 
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;  

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,  

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.  

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.  

This is among the most popular, and most misunderstood poems on the planet. Readers have turned it into a piece of Hallmark happy-graduation, seize-the-day propaganda. But the nature of the decision of the traveler (or one’s own self) is such that because both paths have been worn the same, there is no Right Path—just the chosen path and the other path. What are sighed for ages and ages hence are not so much the wrong decisions as the moments of decision themselves—moments that, one atop the other, mark a life. When I apply those thoughts to my situation, seeing the good points of both college, and post graduate plans it becomes clear to me that it is how I view my decision to PG that determines how I feel about it, not what anyone else can say to me, or how I am perceived to fit in compared to my fellow students. As long as I believe in what I am doing, no one can touch my decision, and that will have made all the difference.

About the author... Minnesota State high school champion Ben Saxton, along with fellow Minnesotans Jan Ketterson, Zach Goldberg, and Jake Brown have delayed entry into college in order to chase their dreams of being the best Nordic Ski racers in the country. They are living in the northwoods near Hayward, training under the guidance of Bill Pierce, FAST Performance Training. Ben Saxton will be sharing his experiences this season as he trains and races across the country and hopefully the world. Additional: Zach Goldberg's blog