With advanced high school sports, there usually comes an expectation that athletes will, undoubtedly, seek a professional career in his or her sport later on in life. Indeed, whether it is football, soccer, hockey, or ping pong, one can almost always depend on athletes dreaming big about the life of a sports star before going off to college.

For WA senior Jason Jung, however, swimming against the stream is only natural while deciding the direction of his post high school life. Having moved from Korea in 2013 during his freshman year at WA, staying with his cousin, Hannah, who was at that time a junior, it did not take long for Jung to make a splash. He was soon known school-round as being one of WA’s fastest swimmers.

Even while competing as a district one league swimmer for WA, Jung plans to pursue a career not as an athlete, but an engineer after university.

“ I don’t think I am going to swim after college. I have always wanted to be an engineer, so I will probably do something related to engineering after I graduate,” Jung said.

Although he remains a dedicated swimmer, training ruthlessly nearly every morning before school, Jung sees swimming not as a career choice or future profession, but instead a hobby that has provided for him not only health and pleasure, but also access to the prestigious Purdue University.

“I think of swimming as a tool for me to be successful in life. For example, when I started applying to colleges, my grades weren’t good enough, but with my swimming career added, it helped them [colleges] notice me […] the average GPA for Purdue’s engineering program is around 3.7. When I applied, mine was somewhere closer to 3.3, but I still got in,” said Jung.

It is not only prestige that the role of a district one swimmer granted Jung, but also a tremendous energy level that he believes is the result of staying physically active through swimming.

“At some points, I get tired [temporarily] and wonder ‘why am I doing this?’ but later if I look back, it [swimming] really gives me energy every day. It seems like if you do more exercise, you will get tired and lose energy, but for me it’s really the opposite,” he said.

Jung has been motivated to continue swimming since he was only five years old, not only for exercise and energy, but simply because the practice had completely integrated itself in Jung’s life,

“It [swimming] was a really big part of my life. All I have done in high school is studying, swimming, and maybe having a little bit of a social life, so it was just always there, and I have always loved it,” he said.