An Interview with Joey Asta
Note: This interview is an opinion piece. This article is meant to give guidance to any reader in high school.
Joey Asta knows that understanding the situation clearly is crucial to being able to solve problems and work as a team. Joey is a graduating high school senior, and he will be attending Claremont College in Southern California next year. In high school, Joey played many sports, notably football and basketball for all four years. His advice to me illuminated how someone can put their time and energy to commit to both school and sports at the same time.
At first, Joey didn’t know where he would go in the future. But he knew that he would still work hard, and he would still give it his best effort. As a high school senior, Joey advises younger students, “If you are interested in internships and clubs and you know that you are interested in that, then you should do that. So I have always been focusing on what I knew I liked and what I was good at.”
And for his case, this was true. In junior year, Joey found a new interest: biology. “The class I liked the most for me was anatomy and physiology, and during senior year, I just followed with it,” he told me. While it is definitely a challenge juggling multiple sports and academics, Joey made time to do both, and he made the effort to excel in both as well.
He told me, “If I had a lot of practice, then I can't do any other free activities, you really just have to make the most out of your time.” And sports taught him a lot about dedication, too.
For Joey, he decided to focus on academics in college and play football for his college at the same time. The decision to do so was not easy, but this was his advice: “I'm playing Division Three school. The time commitment isn't too crazy, but I keep doing what I like.”
Talking to Joey, I noticed that in order to solve the problems, he had to identify his needs. Even in high school, being able to identify what you like and what you are good at are good ways to make decisions that are the best for you.
And finding the right choice is hard -- it takes time, and it takes learning. When talking about college applications, Joey says, “I think the biggest theme in the essays that I was writing was what you learned from your experiences and how it still affects you.” Learn about other opportunities. “Preparing your resume, researching interesting opportunities, coaching and counseling are all very helpful. Mock interviews and research into the companies you are applying to are also very helpful.” Being able to experiment and make decisions ourselves can help us learn what we really want to do and put in the effort for the things we are passionate about.
The most important advice from Joey that I think was this: even in a tough time, having a good smile really takes it home. Whether it was in sports or at school, being able to put the extra effort in results in getting a little extra out. “If I go into it with a smile, and with a good attitude, when I am doing something hard, the more effort I put into it, the more I get out of it, and the more fun it becomes,” Joey ends. There are times where we don’t put in that much effort because we don’t think that we are going to get much out of it. But talking to Joey, I learned how it is a process, whether it was working hard during football practice or in biology class.
