I’ve loved volleyball since the first time I played in 5th grade. I continued playing all the way through my first years of college, and I’ve realized it taught me far more than just how to play the sport—it taught me about learning.

When playing volleyball, you can explicitly see when what you are doing isn’t working. If I go up for a swing and it hits the net, it’s easy to see something went wrong. It’s also easy to get discouraged by that immediate failure. Though when you are surrounded by the right coaches and players, they help you recognize exactly what went wrong. They’re able to see the way your hand hits the ball, know your contact happened at the wrong point in your swing, and give you pointers on how to approach it better next time. Eventually, with enough practice, you can feel it. When you take time to drill the skill—repeat it in a controlled environment—you develop muscle memory and learn the difference between what it feels like to do it wrong versus right.

Building this muscle memory undoubt­edly takes time, especially when playing at higher levels. There are so many things that need to line up to get a point. The final hit depends on the set before it, which depends on the pass before that. At every contact, the player responsible must deliv­er. That’s what makes it so tough, but all the more satisfying when it goes right.

I’ve found problem-solving works in a similar way. You often know how you’re meant to start a physics problem, and maybe even what form the answer should come in. But there are several things that can, and often will, go wrong along the way. When you fail and you’re granted the opportunity to pursue the problem again, you return far better informed by virtue of repetition. I credit my coaches and my UPrep science and math teachers for this problem-solving mentality, which really is a growth mindset. They taught me how to identify where things are wrong and how to ask the right questions, so I can return to the problem stronger. Fundamentally, they helped me understand the point is not to get it right the first time, but to get it right eventually—to commit yourself to taking the time to work at it, using mistakes as opportunities for growth.

This idea came full circle in my classes at Wellesley College, where I majored in astrophysics before pursuing my master’s in physics at Brown. In my first Wellesley physics class, lessons I had learned in my UPrep Calculus class with Mr. Chestnut finally clicked, by virtue of the application of calculus to the relationship between position, velocity, and acceleration. I remember initially struggling with matrices in Statistics class at UPrep with Ms. Howe, but in my Wellesley electricity and magnetism course, once again my understanding clicked at a deeper level.

In both learning and volleyball, I am ultimately motivated by curiosity and fun. This mindset was made possible by passionate educators both in the classroom and on the court, and the classmates and players I worked alongside. When I was a UPrep varsity volleyball player, I remember our coach giving us each a piece of the same ribbon on game day—we’d all wear them tied to our shoes or up in our hair. My UPrep duffle bag still has a bunch of those ribbons tied to it, and they remind me of the importance of team bonding and tradition. We tie-dyed shirts, created playlists for the bus rides, and dressed up for practice on Halloween. No matter how high the stakes were, all I really remember was how much fun I had.

Our team’s joy was contagious. In volleyball, it’s easy to see when something goes wrong, but it’s undeniable when something goes right—you can hear it. You must maintain a constant conver­sation on the court, and one of the most important parts of that is celebrating each other’s wins. When it all lined up and someone got a kill at the end of a long play, the sound of the ball slamming on the ground was like no other. We’d erupt into cheers—with the sheer amount of noise we’d make, the crowd couldn’t help but cheer along with us.

The joy I find on volleyball courts is like the joy I find in museums. When I was a kid, I spent hours in museums exploring the world, and learning about astronomy in my local planetarium ultimately led me to physics. My growth mindset and commitment to lifelong learning pushed me to stick with physics, even when difficult. Currently, I’m performing research with a professor in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Washington, and in a remarkable full-circle moment, I’m running and developing onsite and virtual programming for the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. I’m proud to be part of a team working to show future scientists what museums once showed me—that no matter what discipline, sport, or hobby you choose, you do yourself and others a disservice if you let the need to be perfect stop you from starting at all. If you have a real passion for something, your unique perspective, curiosity, and joy are invaluable.

Read more about stories about UPrep alumni in the current UPrep Magazine.