"The 2020 Senior Perspectives is the 15th in a series of annual collections. Senior captains and representatives of teams at Harvard have been invited to contribute viewpoints based on personal experience from both their senior seasons and full varsity careers at Harvard."

Megan Galbreath
Hometown: Cape Coral, Fla.
Concentration: Neurobiology
House Affiliation: Adams

It's funny, the memories that stick out over the course of my four years with Harvard Women's Swimming and Diving. There's the time my sophomore year that I rode my scooter to morning practice wearing my red cowboy boots and lift clothes because I was dog-tired and running late…and somehow, my foggy brain seemed to think this was most efficient way to get prepped for both a session in Palmer-Dixon and the sunny spring day. Fast forward to my junior year, when the team took delight in the fluffy, heavenly bathrobes provided by the hotel at UCLA, so we all donned them and lounged around in bed gossiping and watching bad reality TV for hours. There was the time that we hiked to the top of Koko Head in the pitch black, and my teammate played the Lion King theme song as we watched the sun rise over Oahu. There are, of course, the post-Ivy Championship win celebrations (#backtoback), the annual apple picking outings to Honey Pot Farms (and more importantly, the subsequent delicious apple cider donut feasts), the beginning-of-season glamorous photoshoot sessions on Widener Steps, and countless team meals in Quincy and Lowell.
 
Then, there's my senior year. I wish that I could imprint the entire experience in my mind, so that if I were to press "play" forty years from now, I could live it all over again. During our Widener Steps team photoshoot session in September, the freshmen bestowed the seniors with our traditional glitzy crowns. It was that same hot pink, sparkly crown that I wore to take a final "Look Mom, I did it!" picture in my empty dorm room after COVID-19 sent us packing in March; the single belonging that I left behind, in the middle of the bare bed, to mark my time at Harvard. In October, our team dressed to the nines for Halloween, breaking out a wide range of ridiculous costumes for our "Under the Sea" theme and spurring my decision to reactivate the "Sparkleliciousss" Instagram account that a former teammate, Jing, had bestowed upon me years earlier. The next month brought the start of competition season and, with it, the festivities of our senior meet. Then it was off to a jam-packed December, which featured the infamous-yet-loved Graduate Hotel at the University of Minnesota.
 
After a brief R&R session at home for the holidays, I was back in the thick of it, twisting, flipping, and occasionally flopping my way through training trip in Puerto Rico. I knew 2020 was going to be wild when the team was awoken by the 6.4 magnitude earthquake that hit the island in early January, but I had no idea that it would more closely resemble a roller coaster than the exhilarating zip lining adventure we embarked upon in the mountains later that week. I will always remember nailing my 305c in Blodgett during our meet against Brown, taking a celebratory "last first day of school" picture with my class in the Berg, and tearing up watching Kat's final dive at Princeton. I will look back with fondness at my last moments as a Harvard diver – laughing during my final dance session with Georgi, hitting my final 3m dive, and feeling so proud of my teammates and their ~Electric Love~ during our final team meeting at Ivies. I will never forget the kindness and support that HWSD showed the senior class when we were told to permanently leave our Harvard home for our familial ones just before Spring Break.
 
I guess the point of all this is to say that my experience as a Harvard athlete gave me life. The memories that stick out to me are the ones filled with love, laughter, friendship, celebration, and adventure. That's not to dismiss the innumerable hours that I spent working my butt off on the boards and in the weight room because without that hard work, our team would not be the light-hearted, close-knit, victorious unit that we are; it is simply to say that my time here was special because I was surrounded by people and experiences that showed me how life is supposed to be lived. Every freshman student-athlete at Harvard walks through our gates knowing the values of drive, determination, dedication, perseverance, and grit; without those qualities, we wouldn't have gotten here in the first place. What we learn in our four years here is how to balance those qualities with vivacity so that we can work towards something that is greater than ourselves. For that life lesson – and the dozens of cherished memories that accompany it – I am forever indebted to HWSD.