From a distance, Jennifer Rodriguez will attending abundant like the added 1,962 acceptance admission from the University of Miami on Friday. She’ll be cutting a cap and gown, Wholesale Snapbacks and absolutely a big smile, as she crosses the date at the BankUnited Center to accept her diploma.
Diehard Winter Olympic admirers may do a bifold yield and ascertain that yes, it is absolutely that Jennifer Rodriguez, the four-time Olympic speedskater who grew up in Miami and won two brownish medals at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. She turns 37 in June, has the Olympic rings tattooed on her larboard ankle, and Friday will accept her amount in exercise physiology, the aboriginal footfall adjoin her ultimate appetite of a career in orthopedics.
Standing on the Olympic badge belvedere was something she dreamed about aback watching aerialist Mary Lou Retton in the 1984 Olympics. She says earning a authority — with a 3.9 GPA in her aloft — will be added gratifying, in a way, because belief was not about as fun or accustomed to her as antagonism about ovals on skates.
“I anticipate I adeptness cry,” Rodriguez said. “This was tougher for to me to achieve than acceptable medals. I did sports my accomplished activity and was consistently acceptable at it. Academy never came simple for me. I was aB and C apprentice in inferior top and top school. I spent one year at FIU, but was just traveling through the motions.
“Now that I’m older, as old as some of my professors, I in fact capital to apprentice the material. I formed really, really, in fact harder to acquire this degree. I put all the activity and assurance I had for skating into school.”
On Wednesday, Rodriguez was accustomed the Outstanding Accolade for Excellence in Exercise Physiology. She said it was the aboriginal bookish account she had anytime received.
“For me to win an bookish account is a huge accomplishment,” she said. “I put my accomplished activity on authority to alternation for the Olympics, and afresh at age 32 I went aback to active the activity of an 18-19 year old, active with my dad, animate a part-time job, accepting basically a poor bankrupt academy apprentice for four years.”
Rodriguez, who is Cuban-American, grew up a Hurricanes football fan and said UM was her “dream school” advancing out of Palmetto High, but she didn’t accept the grades and her ancestors didn’t accept the money.
She mentioned that to UM admiral Donna Shalala if they met on the pitcher’s bank at a Hurricanes baseball bold in the animation of 2002. Rodriguez had been asked to bandy out the aboriginal angle as a anniversary of her Olympic medals. Shalala told her if she anytime absitively to acknowledgment to college, to let her Block Snap Snapbacks apperceive and she would try to advice achieve it happen.
After the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Rodriguez acquainted it was time to adhere up the skates and accompany an apprenticeship and a career.
“I capital to move on, and I knew my time with skating was up,” she said. “Most Olympic athletes don’t retire with a nice backup egg, so we accept to alpha over.”
She got in blow with Shalala, who got the acceptance action rolling and has kept tabs on Rodriguez anytime since. Afterwards 12 years out of the classroom, it was a big adjustment.
Rodriguez said she had to relearn the a lot of basal bookish skills, such as demography addendum and autograph an essay.
“It was a little overwhelming,” she said. “I had to apprentice how to apprentice again.”
She got a part-time job as a trainer in the Wellness Center on campus. Every chargeless minute she had, she headed to a little gray table to study. Co-workers teased her that they were traveling to put a applique aloft the table and address it to her.
She said a lot of acceptance and advisers had no abstraction who she was.
“My face is not one you recognize,” she said. “Once in a while anyone at the Wellness Center would attending at me twice, and if they heard my name, they’d bethink my story. They knew the adventure of the Miami speedskater, but they didn’t apperceive my face.”
Rodriguez affairs to yield some time off to relax and get aback assimilate her bike to get in appearance again. She misses the 50-mile bike rides that became added exceptional as the appointment amount increased. She will move to Maryland to accompany firefighter admirer Phil Stratton, and afresh administer to alum schools.
Stratton will be in the admirers Friday for the graduation, forth with Rodriguez’s father, brother, sister-in-law, niece and her mom’s accessory from Boston. Her one affliction is that her mother, Barbara, won’t be there. She died of blight in June 2009.
“She would accept been so appreciative of me, The Yo MTV Rap Logo Snapbacks to apperceive I assuredly became a Miami Hurricane,” Rodriguez said. “If I told her I won an bookish award, she’d be like ‘Holy Moly!’ I ambition she could be actuality for this. She’ll absolutely be on my mind.”
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