Bastidas: Hi Paly, this is Anna Bastidas of The Paly Voice and I’m here with Varun Kohli and Christine Chang who wrote the cover story of the latest edition of Viking about students and how they balance the responsibilities of their school work with the responsibilities of being on a team.

The article highlights how student athletes must deal with the pressure to excel in both academic and athletic areas of their lives.

The idea for the story was brought forward by another staff member of The Viking. Although it might not seem like the most controversial article, the story became the cover article because a large portion of the Paly community is able to relate to the idea of having to balance school work with other commitments.

Chang: It’s just to look at how student athletes deal with school work and sports, and I think it was an observation…that she had made personally, that she thought would be worthy to further explore, I guess. I think the idea that the story was relatable, that a lot of people could relate to the topics that we were addressing.

Bastidas: Paly has a huge number of student athletes. So I was wondering how both of the reporters decided on who to showcase in their article.

Chang: We tried to look at it as unbiasedly as possible, and we were looking for students who kind of represented larger groups of students, and we focused on upperclassmen specifically in this article.

Bastidas:Why did you do that?

Kohli: Because upperclassmen typically have more strenuous academic schedules and they’re more typically on varsity teams and in leadership positions on their teams. So they are normally pulled in different ways much more then the underclassmen.

Bastidas: I was also curious to hear what the reporters thought about the eligibility requirements at Paly.

Change: Personally, I think that for most students it’s achievable. And you know, I haven’t really had much of a chance to formulate my own ideas because I have tried to not have a personal opinion throughout writing this story, so for me at least, this is the first time I’ve ever thought about eligibility seriously. So I think it’s probably, for a lot of students, something that they don’t even think about until maybe they are in a situation where they are ineligible, or their friends are, or their teammates are, and I think that for most people it’s just a given that they will make the requirement.

Bastidas: Since both Chang and Kohli run at Paly, I asked them how they balance the time between practice and their schoolwork.

Change: For me, personally, I know that school work is more important for me, or just something I’ve invested myself more into, so I know that running is something that I just do for myself.

Kohli: For me, cross-country is a really big part of the things that I do, so balancing it is kind of hard because track and cross-country practice are pretty intense. As in, they’re not as intense as a football practice, say, but you’re pretty tired when you get home and it’s hard to do work. I stress both school work and cross-country a lot and it’s really hard to find a balance, and I guess the way that you can do it is to just make sure that you get everything done.

Bastidas: Paly, make sure to pick up your copy of The Viking, or you can read all of the articles online at The Paly Voice. I’m Anna Bastidas for The Paly Voice. Thanks for listening to another episode of VoiceWaves.