At the start of every school year, our students are thrust into unfamiliar territory. The more predictable we can make a new situation or environment, the more likely our students become to embrace their own vulnerabilities and experience growth. This is where powerful learning occurs. While trying to prepare for a new crop of students, I often consider my own struggles as a college swimmer.

My high school swim team practiced every day at a crumbling community college pool. It was always too cold. There were no diving blocks. The lane lines would snag on our suits. Despite less‐than‐glamorous conditions, I loved to swim.

Swimming demanded my complete attention to the present, imparting an acute awareness of my own breath. I am prone to thinking my way out of uncomfortable experiences, but 5 a.m. practices taught me the tenets of mindfulness long before Oprah or Gwyneth made it trendy. In the pool, there were no escapes or distractions, save the bold linear markers along the bottom of each lane. Under water, I allowed myself to perceive excruciating pain with sharp attention and find balance and flexibility within myself.

Swimming also gave me an affinity for storing data sets in my head. Intervals, splits, and yardage totals propelled my internal calculator. Every second of swim practice required a level of mathematical grappling I now reserve for tax season. The sport increased my endurance both physically and intellectually. There was a time in my life when I could tell you exactly how long it took for a minute to pass without counting the seconds or consulting a clock. I possessed an intimate knowledge of time. I knew what one minute felt like. Now, I admit, my brain is so nurtured by iPhone algorithms that it struggles to compute more than one thing at a time.

Back then, I lived for the euphoric feeling of touching the wall at the end of a race or a workout. There is a weightless, tingling sense of self‐worth that nothing but speed can inspire. Swimming is punishing in the moment and blissful after the fact—the opposite of bourbon. It is its own reward.

During my senior year of high school, I was recruited to a Division 1 college swim program. My eyes teared up on the official visit when I saw all of the state‐of‐the‐art equipment, electronic timing pads, and the bright clean deck. I had never been privy to such luxurious training conditions. With access to Division 1 resources, I was confident I could reach my full potential.

There were a few big differences between high school and college swimming. While my high school coach had always posted the entire workout and total yardage on the board before practice, my college coach preferred to add each set, line by line as we went through practice. My high school coach made adjustments as necessary and emphasized our focus for the day. My college coach left us in suspense. It killed me. I lost my balance and my motivation.

I found myself wasting mental energy by stressing over how much effort to expel or conserve. Was this the main set or part of the warmup? Was practice nearly over or did we have thousands of yards left to go? It wasn't the training itself that exhausted me, but the not‐knowing. I craved predictability. Having an overarching goal and a clear understanding of our agenda had kept me afloat and helped me work together with my high school teammates. By contrast, secrecy left me drowning in a silo of anxiety during my college career. My times never got faster. By senior year, I was repulsed by the sticky texture of a bathing cap.

I've avoided indoor pools for a decade—abandoned gurgling basins, eluded lapping gutters, sworn off turbid deck air. The smell of chlorine still exhausts me. It's the scent of irrecoverable talent. A bouquet of fear. My experience in college left me lost, without a map. This can also be the case in our classrooms if we neglect to create balance and predictability for our students.