So you want to know what it's like to be a student/athlete at Middlebury? Come along
By Matt Jennings
Photo by Michael Sipe
It's 8:30 on a Monday morning, and the Hamlin dining hall in the Freeman International Center is slowly filling with bleary-eyed students, moving as if in a trance from the food-service line to the rows of tables in the dining room. The aroma of breakfast food hangs in the air, and many of the kids stare catatonically at an overhead television broadcasting ESPN's Sportscenter.
Mayo Fujii '05 sits with a friend in the middle of the room. Though she has a clear view of the TV, her head is buried in an intermediate Japanese textbook; only when highlights of the women's World Cup appear on the screen does she glance at the set, and then it's back to the open textbook. She awoke a little more than an hour ago, after logging a typical six-hour night of sleep, and while she's less than 24 hours removed from a grueling overtime soccer match against Bowdoin (a 1–0 Panther victory), followed by three hours of teaching ski-patrol class and several hours of homework, the only sign that the 20-year-old might be the least bit groggy is the extra-large mug of coffee in her right hand.
Today is a "normal" fall day in the life of Mayo Fujii, a neuroscience major and soccer midfielder from Londonderry, Vt. Before her day will end, she'll have attended three classes, a "language" lunch, and soccer practice; spent several hours working in a psychology lab; and digested about 30 pages of philosophy text. In many ways, Fujii is a paradox. Far from being a large woman —the soccer roster lists her as five feet, six inches tall—she nevertheless has an outsized presence, both on the soccer field and on campus. She's soft-spoken, but her words are delivered clearly, almost forcefully. She'll confidently discuss the intricacies of urban geography (a subject she says she's fascinated by, but insists she's not well versed in) and uses references from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged to help explain how she's more productive during soccer season; yet, when the subject of her performance on the soccer field is raised, she grows quiet, almost bashful. Fujii has started every game for the nationally ranked Panthers and is the second-leading scorer on the team. On Sunday, she deftly assisted on the game-winning goal, a fact she neglects to mention. Only later, when an observer brings up the assist and asks why she hadn't said anything, does Fujii acknowledge her role in the victory, murmuring that she doesn't like to talk about herself in that way.
"In so many ways she's the typical Middlebury student," says women's soccer coach Diane Boettcher, "and in so many ways she's just extraordinary. But that's Mayo."
9:05 a.m. Fujii sits in a small classroom in Sunderland Language Center, bantering with her Japanese instructor—in Japanese—about yesterday's game. She took her first Japanese class last year, attended the Japanese School this past summer, and is preparing to go abroad in February to spend six months studying and living in Japan.
The daughter of a Japanese father and American mother, Fujii became interested in languages at a young age—influenced as much by her father's genealogy as her mother's experience growing up overseas as the child of a State Department appointee. Japanese wasn't really spoken in the Fujii household, and there was absolutely no pressure to learn the language, Fujii says. "Because of differences in cultures," she explains, "my father wanted us to pursue the language on our own, if we wanted to."
This morning, she's one of six students arrayed in a semicircle, answering the instructor's queries about weekend activities. A student to her left peppers his response with non-Japanese words, such as tequila, and says to Fujii, who had spoken about soccer and ski-patrol class, "I just did bad things over the weekend. It's so much harder to explain."
10:10 a.m. After a speed walk across campus to Bicentennial Hall, Fujii has settled into the third row of a modern science classroom. About 50 students furiously take notes as a psychology professor lectures about ion movements in postsynaptic cells. Fujii scribbles notes in a spiral notebook and raises her hand to ask a question midway through class.
"Just for the sake of context," she begins, "is this process similar to the effect pain relievers would have on sensory function?" Fujii would later say that human performance is what interests her most, and sees the study of neuroscience as the perfect vehicle to advance her understanding of why, and how, humans do the things they do.
11:05 a.m. Fujii bounds up two flights of stairs to her third, and final, class of the day: urban geography. She takes a front-row seat in the packed classroom, and for the third time today—before the class launches into a discussion concerning spatial class-sorting —she answers questions about Sunday's game.
12:00 p.m. "I usually use this time to check e-mail and to organize what I'm going to do the rest of the day," Fujii says as she strides into Bi Hall's Armstrong Library. Her dorm room computer is broken, so Fujii has a backlog of e-mails to sort through. Thirty minutes pass before she glances at her watch and bolts from her chair. "I have to get to the language tables for lunch," she says as she rushes out the door. "If I'm late, I might not get a seat."
12:35 p.m. Cook dining hall in the FIC reverberates with the overlapping sounds of global discourse. Round tables covered with white tablecloths dot the room. As their centerpiece, laminated placards notate what language is to be spoken at each table. Fujii wolfs down a salad and tears into a grilled-cheese sandwich. The table is packed; Fujii has grabbed the last seat.
4:00 p.m. After spending the early part of the afternoon studying, Fujii sits on the tiled floor of the College's sports medicine facility and laces up her cleats. The Panthers played two games over the weekend and will face Colby-Sawyer tomorrow, so today's practice should be relatively light.
6:30 p.m. Fujii and several of her teammates have grabbed a table in Ross dining hall, where they feast on steak and baked potatoes and animatedly swap stories from the past weekend. After tomorrow's game, the women will have a much-needed day off from soccer, and many (Fujii included) plan on attending the U.S.-Norway World Cup match in Boston. With all that she has going on, it's easy to forget that Fujii has a social life. However, she is a college student and hasn't lost sight of what that means.
"It all comes down to priorities," Fujii says. "Sometimes personal health and enjoyment take priority. I've come to realize that there's added value in doing things outside of what you 'should' do."
Today, however, there's still work to be done. Soon Fujii will head off to the psych lab, where she'll spend three hours examining various dissections of human brains, followed by an hour or so of reading for a philosophy class. Only then will she allow her head to hit the pillow. Soon it will be time to get up and do it all over again.