Page 32 of Made Better Together

“Nice. I spent a lot of time with my mom. It may be the last summer I’m there for a long time. Who knows where I’ll need to be next year after graduation.”

Memories of our conversation last year flood in. “Did you figure out what you want? Soccer versus medical school?”

“I thought I had. But then I did really well on the MCAT, and being around Mom—let’s just say her enthusiasm for her work is contagious.”

I wrack my brain for what kind of medicine her mom practices, but I don’t think we’ve talked about it before. I hedge my words instead. “Would you want to do the same specialty?”

She nods. “Yeah. Mom chose neurology after living through her favorite great-aunt’s dementia battle. There were years when the whole family had to tag team to care for Aunt Trish, and it was really hard to watch her lose her memories, eventually lose herself. Mom wanted to help others like her, you know?”

“A noble reason.”

“I was only a baby when she died, so for me, it’s more that I nerd out on brain science.” She says this without any shame.

“As you should. It’s interesting shit.”

She looks excited. “Wait, you studied neuroscience in school?”

“Not really.” I’m not going to get into the reason I know more than I need to at age twenty-two. “A topic for another day.”

She looks at me with a question in her eyes, clearly wanting to ask more. Then she seems to shake it off.

“Well, anyway, Mom was so inspiring when talking about her patients that the urge to start med school sooner rather than later crept up on me again.” She gives a little shrug. “I submitted the initial app last month while I was home. So we’ll see what happens.”

“You’ll figure it out.” I wish I had more direction to give her, but that’s all I got. I have zero clue how the medical school process works.

“What about you?”

I tell her about the internship with Milo and Grace—what SLP does, and to the extent I know, my role.

“You’re keeping your foot in the door with soccer then?” She looks intrigued. “I thought that balloon had ‘popped.’” She uses finger quotes on the last word. Nice to see she remembers our conversation in that much detail.

“For playing soccer? Yes. But I think being at SLP will involve interesting work. Challenging.” Maybe. I hope so anyway.

“Will your playing experience help at all? Like, with the business side?”

“I’m sure. There are definitely transposable skills. You know how I was center mid, right?”

“Yeah.”

Center midfielders cover the whole field, and while we can get into scoring position, we also focus heavily on setting up plays for strikers like Eden. Being able to swiftly assimilate the location of other players, ball movements, and possible strategies is key.

“I’ve always been able to synthesize information rapidly—on the field, and in school. A lot of what their company does involves pulling from a bunch of disciplines and helping athletes make the best business and financial decisions.”

“We’re nerding out again, aren’t we?”

I lift the bottle. “At least there’s wine.”

“What did you major in?”

I scrunch my face. “Get ready.”

“Oh, it’s super nerdy, then.”

“Or ridiculously pretentious. It’s an interdisciplinary concentration that’s technically in Engineering and Applied Sciences, but you take classes all over the place. It’s called ‘Operations Research and Financial Engineering.’”

“Oh wow, you’ve got me beat. I’m a simple Biology major, at the end of the day. So how does your degree relate to soccer?” Her tone is understandably confused.

“It’s more about how it’ll help the players. You study how to model math and financial questions where there’s uncertainty, apply real-world data, and make the best decision on the table. It lines up well with the analysis I’ll do in the internship, to help them build their business and financial plans.”