Elon University hosted a Liberal Arts Forum on March 11 where Olympian, filmmaker, and author Alexi Pappas spoke about her experiences as an Olympian. Pappas said one of the first things she learned after her competition was that many Olympic athletes fall into depression after the competition.
“After the 2016 Olympics, I experienced the then-well-known secret of the post-Olympic recession,” Pappas told the Liberal Arts Forum. “We didn't talk about it much, but everyone went through it.”
Pappas said she believes her depression was a result of her mindset at the time. Although she had reached the peak of her athletic ability, breaking her Japanese record in her 10km run in Greece, she was always in doubt as to what would happen next.
“That's a question I wish people would stop asking, because it's very harmful and it's more of a challenge than a question,” Pappas said. “You're putting someone through something they may not be ready for. I had a great Olympics, but I felt terrible afterward.”
Rather than embrace the future in the moment, Pappas tried to push away those feelings of sadness due to her experience with mental illness. It was her experience at a music festival that made her realize the importance of her decompression.
“Respect the decompression. This is a phrase I learned at Burning Man,” Pappas said. “This is what they call the time you take to decompress after doing the things people do at Burning Man.”
From left to right, Madison Sinowiec, Alexi Pappas, and Maggie Letts discuss Pappas' life as an Olympian, filmmaker, and author during the Liberal Arts Forum held March 11 in Whitley Auditorium. gave a lecture during
Regardless of the post-Olympic recession, Pappas said she wants her students to learn from the butterflies and that change is good.
“Human evolution is like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly,” Pappas says. “It's slowly breaking down. It's not just growing wings and changing. …I feel like shit sometimes.”
Pappas said humans can't go back to what they were before, just as butterflies can't go back to being caterpillars.
Pappas' perspective and experience led forum member Samuel McCusker Alvarez to propose bringing her to Elon.
“I felt like there weren't enough athletes, especially female athletes, to come to Elon and speak,” McCusker Alvarez said. She said: “She felt she could convey a pretty powerful message.”
Besides being prepared for change and being open to letting go after completing a mission, another part of Pappas' message was to celebrate everything.
“Celebrating is powerful,” Pappas says. “The brain likes to chase rewards, and celebration actually feels good to the brain, and the built-in reward makes it easier and easier to accomplish difficult things.”
Pappas also said she believes celebrating is important to everyone's journey to success, whether it's going to the Olympics, making a movie or passing an exam.
“It's not like sprinkles on a cake,” Pappas says. “It's the cake. It's a piece of the cake. It's a part of the journey of getting better and it's like building your brain in a way that actually rewards yourself.”
Students such as sophomore Tristin Oberg attended the forum and said they were excited to hear from Pappas and learn from her experiences both as an athlete and as a person.
“We can learn from her, especially her journey as an athlete,” Oberg said. “I think we can learn a lot from that and her experience by looking at the steps she took to get to this point.”
Pappas said she hopes students attending the forum will prepare for change, learn to let go and celebrate everything in life, no matter how small.
“You're in a beautiful, chaotic washing machine called college,” Pappas said. “You have to rub your jeans and tank tops and dresses and socks and see what color comes out on the other side. And it's so nice and beautiful to be influenced by this place.”
