Elon University hosted a liberal arts forum March 11 where Olympic athlete, filmmaker and writer Alexi Pappas talked about her experiences as an Olympic athlete. According to Pappas, one of the first things she learned after her games is that a lot of Olympic athletes fall into depression after they finish competing.
“After the Olympics in 2016, I experienced the then well-known secret of a post-Olympic depression,” Pappas said during the Liberal Arts Forum. “We didn’t really talk about it, but everybody experienced it.”
Pappas said she believes that this depression was an aftermath of her mindset at the time; she had reached her peak athletic ability by breaking a national record in the 10k for Greece and was questioned constantly about what would be next for her.
“That’s a question I hope people stop asking, because that is so damaging and it’s more like a task than a question,” Pappas said. “You’re tasking someone to something that they might not be ready for. I had an amazing Olympics, but I felt terrible afterwards.”
Rather than embracing the future in that moment, Pappas attempted to push those feelings of sadness away because of her experiences with mental illness. It wasn’t until an experience at a music festival where she realized the importance of decompression.
“Respect the decompression, which is a word I learned at Burning Man,” Pappas said. “It’s what they call the time after you do whatever people do at Burning Man, and then they decompress and they take time.”
From left to right, Madison Synowiec, Alexi Pappas and Maggie Retz speak in Whitley Auditorium on March 11 during a Liberal Arts forum discussion about Pappas' life as an Olympic athlete, filmmaker and writer.
Regardless of the post-Olympic depression, Pappas said she wants students to learn from butterflies and learn that change is a good thing.
“Human evolution is more like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly,” Pappas said. “It's kind of slowly broken down. It doesn't just sprout wings and change. … It feels like crap sometimes.”
Pappas said humans can’t go back to who we were before, just like how butterflies can’t change back into caterpillars.
Pappas’ perspective and experiences were what inspired forum member, Samuel McCusker Alvarez to pitch bringing her to Elon.
“I felt as though we didn't have enough athletes, especially female athletes, to come and speak at Elon,” McCusker Alvarez said. “I felt like she could send a pretty powerful message.”
Aside from being prepared for change and embracing decompression after completing a task, another part of Pappas’ message was to celebrate everything.
“Celebrating is a superpower,” Pappas said. “The brain likes to chase reward, and the truth is that the celebration feels good on my brain, and it makes it easier and easier to go do the hard thing because there's a reward built in.”
Pappas also said she believes that celebrating is crucial to everyone’s success journeys — whether that is going to the Olympics, making a movie or passing an exam.
“It's not like sprinkles on the cake,” Pappas said. “It is the cake. It's part of the cake. It's part of the journey of getting better is like building your brain in a way where you're actually rewarding 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 and especially from her steps as an athlete,” Oberg said. “To see the steps that she took to get to where she is I think we can learn a lot from that and her experience.”
Pappas said she hopes that the students at this forum prepare themselves for change, learn to decompress and celebrate everything in life no matter how small.
“You're in a beautiful, chaotic washing machine that is college,” Pappas said. “You have to rub up against jeans and tank tops, dresses and socks and see what color would come out on the other side. And it is very lovely and beautiful to be affected by this place.”