Last Wednesday, I attended the café talk by Silviu Tanasoiu who coaches the men’s tennis team here at Cornell. He talked about his experiences both as a player and as a coach and I could see how passionate he was about the sport and about the players on the team. Coach Tanasoiu explained the lengthy recruitment process in which potential athletes are scouted from all across the world, making a very diverse tennis team. In his search to find the very best players, it is also important to find the best people because that shapes what kind of teammate and player the athlete will be. He talked about how he once spent nearly a whole year recruiting a prospective student but in the end decided that this student would not be a good fit for the team because of his attitude towards the sport and those around him. Despite the fact that he was a good player, his attitude would make him a bad fit for the team. I was impressed by how the athletes dealt with balancing their heavy academic workload with their tennis schedule. They have to be extremely dedicated to the sport and to their field of interest to maintain that rigorous schedule. What I took away from this talk was that success comes with hard work and a good attitude. In the future, I will apply what he said about time management to my own life as that’s something I struggle with.