What makes us, student-athletes, so different from other students?

I hope you have read my first two blogs and have a better idea of what being a student-athlete is all about. This blog will be a bit different. It will be about some research I did when I was in Cegep last year. I wanted to learn more about the characteristics of student-athletes in a college setting. As a result, I discovered many things about my "true" identity and how it affects my everyday life.

The main characteristics that differentiates them from the non student-athlete population is the existence of two social identities: athlete & student identity. These identities are two competing identities characterized by the dominance of one identity over the other. This dominance is influenced by every day situations and experiences, and is also established by gender. I will only discuss how it is influenced by situations and experiences.

Unlike professional athletes, collegiate athletes are expected to take on multiple roles. Specifically, those of athlete and student. Both these roles require a great amount of commitment in order to constantly perform well athletically and academically at the same time. Often, when individual student athletes find it difficult to balance both roles, one takes precedence over the other – usually athlete over student. In fact, these roles are two competing identities. Particularly, they are a student identity and an athlete identity. But, individually, each identity emerges depending on the adaptability to specific tasks. Moreover, the identity that is most adaptive for performing well on a specific task will dominate since ultimately, one of the identities (student) is more adaptive for performing well on academic tasks, whereas the other identity (athlete) is more distinctive in the campus context.

For example, when a football player is writing a math exam, he will be a student, but when he is completing a self-rating questionnaire, he will be an athlete. Surprisingly, not all tasks carry with them a strong goal to achieve. Some elicit, more self-reflective thoughts and feelings, such as measuring one’s academic or athletic self-regard would suggest that the identity most distinctive in the social context will take over. Hence, student athletes have two different social identities which change from moment to moment, depending on the thoughts and motives triggered by ongoing activity.     

Enough with the long scholarly explanation…Now let me tell about how this research influences my personal perception of different situations. Ever since I found out about the two competing identities, I tend to analyze what identity takes over after a situation. For instance, when I have an exam, my student identity clearly dominates since I am in a “school setting” and feel like every other student in the exam room, although I do treat my exam as a competition/challenge. On the other hand, when I was writing my second blog, I related more of my thoughts to my athlete identity. It all depends on the situation and context.

Hopefully, this gave you more insight about who we, student-athletes, really are and how such differences affect our everyday life.