One Jump at a Time by Nathan Chen

Author:Nathan Chen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-09-27T00:00:00+00:00

By the time I started classes in the fall of 2018, I felt pretty comfortable with my new setup. Mitch, Yuki, and Brandon had already visited Yale and talked to the folks in the athletic department to work out ice time for me at the Whale, Yale’s skating facility, as well as time at the gym for my strength and conditioning exercises.

The Whale is technically named the David S. Ingalls Rink, after a former Yale ice hockey captain, but it’s called the Whale because the curved roof and rising tail resemble the back of a humpback whale. It’s an amazing feat of architecture designed by Eero Saarinen, a Yale architecture alum from the 1930s who also designed the St. Louis Gateway Arch and the TWA terminal at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, both really iconic and amazing pieces of work. The Yale Whale, built in 1959, is signature Saarinen—with ribbed timber beams that feed into a curving concrete spine. When I stepped inside, I almost felt like I was actually in the belly of a whale. It was breathtaking, and I was really honored to have the opportunity to skate there. Seeing the Yale “Y” everywhere was also really cool. Most rinks look the same, and feel pretty sterile. But skating at the Whale was special—the stadium seating made skating there not feel like practice, but like I was skating at a major competition venue.

I was lucky enough to get an hour and a half of ice time a day there, but wanted to stick to my normal schedule of skating three hours a day. So while we were in New Haven that spring, we also scouted Champions Skating Center, about half an hour away. I would be in class in the morning and then after class I would skate on campus, and then immediately drive over to Champions for the afternoon sessions. Fortunately, the former Ingalls Rink Operations lead assistant, George Arnaoutis, went above and beyond trying to help me, and whenever extra ice was available he would try to slot me in for that time. Everything fell into place for me to balance school and skating. Thanks to the support of so many people at Yale and Champions, it felt easy. I arrived at school in good spirits and optimistic that everything would work out.

And for the most part, it did. I was pretty excited to get settled in and find my routine. I was in a suite with five other students, and our suite was connected to another, larger one. As for classes, I didn’t know which major I would pick yet, but I was leaning toward doing premed. I figured I should get a science credit out of the way, but I wasn’t super concerned about meeting all the prerequisites; I knew I could always do a postbaccalaureate and finish them later before applying to medical school, if that’s what I ended up deciding. The obstacle I had with pre-med science classes is that they require a lab that takes several hours one day of the week, from 1 P.

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