And when a woman competes against other females, you can’t help but notice how talented and dedicated your peers are. My teammates here are some of the strongest people I’ve ever met.

Rowing with them has both shown me the ways in which I can improve myself and made me realize that this improvement is possible. I no longer worry about being “good for a girl” because I don’t believe that girls or women fall into a second-class category that would merit that kind of qualification.

I would be wrong to argue that athletes are a special breed of people. While I am constantly in awe of my teammates, I am often just as amazed by the accomplishments of women whose campus involvements are concentrated in areas outside of athletics. What I do believe is that involvement in sports gives its participants strengths that they can use after they hang up their cleats, ice skates, or Nikes.

As I grow older, sports and life become less and less different. Suddenly, my success in all areas of life is predicated on the same things I learned long ago in youth lacrosse: work with your teammates, fight through the fatigue, take risks, and always compete as hard as you can.

We’re always told that sports are a metaphor for life. Perhaps that’s just because sports offers us the first chance we get to see life as it is.

—Staff writer Christina C. McClintock can be reached at ccmcclin@fas.harvard.edu.