{"id":12464,"date":"2024-02-02T09:44:23","date_gmt":"2024-02-02T14:44:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=12464"},"modified":"2024-03-05T19:07:29","modified_gmt":"2024-03-06T00:07:29","slug":"how-i-got-here-ren-wolstenholme-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=12464","title":{"rendered":"How I Got Here: Ren Wolstenholme \u201925"},"content":{"rendered":"

My dad was a swimmer. So, when I was a kid, he said, \u201cYou are going to swim, too.\u201d I started competing in a summer swim league when I was 5 years old.<\/span><\/p>\n

The club team I swam with from third grade until my junior year in high school had to shut down during COVID and they never reopened. So, senior year I had to go to a different program<\/span>\u00a0and I figured I\u2019d just finish out my swimming career there. But then that program ignited a new love for swimming, and I wanted to keep doing it in college.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Ren Wolstenholme\u00a0<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019m a long-axis swimmer, which means the strokes where you\u2019re turning side to side, like back and free. At TCNJ, I swim mostly backstroke and then middle-distance freestyles, like the 200 or 500 meters.<\/span><\/p>\n

TCNJ\u2019s women\u2019s team is a community where there\u2019s not huge amounts of pressure. I can go and just swim. It\u2019s fun, and that\u2019s what I appreciate.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have Tourette Syndrome. If I can generally keep my anxiety levels down, that can help control it. But being a college student and athlete, that\u2019s not always an option. Swimming helps because the more tired I am, the less I tic.<\/span><\/p>\n

I started having noticeable tics when I was 12. Nothing jarring. Just some uncontrollable movements. It feels like sneezes or a shiver down my spine. I also have a whistle tic. People think of Tourette Syndrome as yelling out and cursing. That\u2019s probably only one in 10 people.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have accommodations in swimming to make sure that I don\u2019t accidentally disqualify myself because I\u2019m ticking. Sometimes I\u2019d flinch on the block, or make a noise before the timer goes off, which you\u2019re not allowed to do. But if I do that, I can\u2019t be disqualified.<\/span><\/p>\n

A classmate at TCNJ noticed one of my whistles. It was an opportunity to share with my entire class, \u201cThis is me.\u201d I tell my story in terms of education, acknowledgement, and compassion.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m a biomedical engineering major. TCNJ does a really good job of nurturing female engineers and making sure that everybody is receiving the same opportunities. BME especially is pretty evenly split between males and females.<\/span><\/p>\n

I studied abroad for a semester at the University of Newcastle in Australia. They have a pilot program in medical engineering, so I got to go check it out and take an engineering elective. I was one of three girls in a class of 78.<\/span><\/p>\n

Australia was awesome, and I have a 10-year plan to get back. I\u2019m hoping to go to graduate school in the U.S., and then I\u2019ll work in industry or research for a few years to get a solid base of understanding and some savings. And then off to Australia \u2014 that\u2019s the goal.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With big dreams to live Down Under, this swimmer just keeps ticking goals off her list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":12467,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lions-roar","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/298"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12464"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12658,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12464\/revisions\/12658"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}