The week after IASAS is — to say the least — a low point for involved students. 

Why? Coming off the competition high means you hit the week-after low, and what not many people know is that it can be deeply disorientating. The build-up to IASAS is exhilarating, and the event itself even more so; for five days, you live and breathe your sport or skill and the competition. Your goal? Gold. Your missing math homework or upcoming English paper don’t cross your mind once — that is, until you arrive back in Bangkok with six missing assignments and the desperate need for a 12-hour nap.

What’s become coined as “The Post-IASAS Depression” or the “IASAS Blues” refers to the period of time after IASAS when returning students become very unmotivated. 

For lack of better descriptors, they’re uninspired and depressed.

The reasons why range from missing the team and the spirit of IASAS to coming home wishing more goals had been reached. Each student has a different reason for feeling unmotivated, but all stem from the same shared feeling of emptiness. Naika Sachamahithinant, a sophomore Varsity basketball player, shares her thoughts on this.

“I just really missed the team and the cheering and all of that — the spirit overall,” she says. “It’s like a sport that I enjoy and a team that’s very fun and uplifting.” Since Naika doesn’t play a season three sport, IASAS blues hit extra hard with nothing new to focus on or look forward to. Going from tight-knit team practices each day to passing each other in the halls is a challenging change. 

For year-round sports such as swimming, IASAS blues hit just as hard despite the constant practices and competitions that resume almost immediately after IASAS. Demotivation can quickly spread across the team, making training sessions all but empty and the on-deck mood somber.

“You just want to get back together as a team again,” explains Peak Chairatn, a senior Varsity swimmer. “I care about swimming, and the sport itself a lot. The IASAS blues makes people want to quit, and sometimes they kinda feel demotivated, because they didn’t really achieve the results they wanted to, or the work they put in doesn’t really reflect what they got at IASAS.” 

Peak’s sophomore teammates Noon Jarupongrapa and Shin Shin Yan share similar feelings. 

“The feeling of coming back just feels very hollow, and just really sad and some kind of regret,” Noon says. “I still feel some kind of regret like I should have done something better. What if I changed something before that time?”

These feelings can strongly affect the team. When people see others skipping practice (sometimes for weeks), they’re inclined to do the same, something Shin Shin has noticed.

“I think that it affects the team a lot,” she says. “After this IASAS even, there were three people at practice the first day back” when there are usually over 15. It’s downhill from there. Once people realize how much work they have, and how few people are attending practices, team attendance drops drastically. 

“We can negatively affect each other,” she commented.

Kelly Lee, a sophomore IASAS film participant, says that when it comes to the arts, post-IASAS blues are worse due to the event’s collaborative nature.

“IASAS CC is an artistic community, and you tend to find people that have a really similar outlook on life as you,” she says. IASAS film splits its participants into two groups, where they work on a 48-hour film project together. “I was paired with a really amazing creative group, whose creative vision completely matched mine. Because I do film I see the world in terms of scenes — how well does this fit into a camera frame, how good would this look on a screen — and a lot of the people on my IASAS saw it the same way.”

Because it’s not a competitive event, Kelly found that she formed stronger relationships with the people around her, and missed them more once IASAS ended. She explains that competitive IASAS events can cause rivalries or lasting grudges (something she notes about Speech & Debate), and that the absence of this  factor brings post-IASAS blues for arts much deeper. 

Yet what gets most people through the week is the idea of next year, the new hopes and goals that quickly become fresh motivation to keep at it. A new goal like beating a team or racing faster than a certain time, or even the excitement of seeing people from other schools quickly gives students the focus and purpose they need to push through the unmotivation. But for seniors like Peak, these goals are hard to come by. 

“Since I’m a senior this year, I kinda feel like — it’s alright, I’m lazy, I have senioritis,” he says.

But there are ways to get through the sadness and lack of motivation. Naika suggests “looking back at [the] good memories but also looking towards the newer ones that are coming,” and Noon recommends recognizing “that your sport does not define you and that it’s only a part of your identity as a student.”

No matter how lonely practices feel or how badly you don’t want to start training again, just remember, whether you’re a senior experiencing your last IASAS, or a freshman experiencing your first, there’s an endless amount of new experiences waiting for you — whether it’s an IASAS event or not.