Photo courtesy of Janet Kendall ’83.
Julia Lankin ’18 says she gained responsibility on field hockey and lacrosse during her college years.
BY JULIA KLEIN ’21
Mount Holyoke Athletics alum Julia Lankin ’18 majored in psychology and played field hockey and lacrosse during her time here. The Mount Holyoke News caught up with her to talk about her time after Mount Holyoke.
What are some of the lessons or skills that you gained through being an athlete at Mount Holyoke?
I think I definitely learned how to fight through adversity, and I learned how to cope with different people’s personalities. I think having come from a town where all of the kids that you play sports with, are the people that you have grown up with your whole life, to suddenly being on a team with people you don’t know, you have to learn how to read personalities and learn how to get along with people. I think that was a big learning lesson for me being on the team.
I also think it taught me discipline and responsibility with my time management skills, balancing work, sports and school.
What do you do for work now?
I work right now at a pharmaceutical company named Servier. Specifically I am in the human resources department, where I manage most of the talent acquisition and I also manage all of the benefits.
Do you think that your time as a collegiate athlete has prepared you well for this occupation?
I think it taught me how to be mentally strong, and I think, especially being in human resources, there are days where they’re not going to be fun days but you have to learn how to get through it and do your job the best that you can.
It’s similar to sports, when you know you’re going to have a bad practice or that the team you’re about to play is really hard, you have to push through and get through it. So I think in that regard it has that similarity with having to talk about difficult things with people, being in human resources, and working through that to make sure that everybody is comfortable and happy with their workplace and what they’re doing.
I think it also taught me leadership skills and teamwork. I think I am much more independent than I was before I started playing sports at Mount Holyoke, and that’s obviously a life lesson that everybody has to learn. I think Mount Holyoke helped me to escalate that when, I played sports there.