You Might Also Like: On Purpose with Jay Shetty

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**Jay Shetty** (1:13)
Honestly, my feed earlier this year was full of your interviews. I was like, who's this sharp, smart, eloquent, incredible athlete?
And then we saw each other at the Dior show in LA. And hand on my heart, I've never done this to anyone else in the world. I came right to you and I was like, Eileen, I'm a fan, I want you on the show. And thankfully, you wanted to come on too.

**Eileen Gu** (1:33)
I'm, first of all, so flattered to hear you say that. Secondly, the feeling is absolutely mutual. I think what you do is so incredible and you bring this very enlightened, but also highly accessible, like high touch, like very applicable to real life kind of approach to so many people. And I genuinely believe you've made so many people's lives better.

**Jay Shetty** (1:55)
Hey, it's Jay. I don't know what your day's been like, but I was just thinking about you for a minute. And I hope you're being a little patient with yourself because you deserve it. And yeah, I'll talk to you soon.
Eileen Gu, welcome to On Purpose.

**Eileen Gu** (2:21)
Thank you for having me, Jay. I'm so happy to be here.

**Jay Shetty** (2:23)
I wanted to start off by asking you, today you're doing everything. I mean, you've graduated from one of the best schools in the world. You are one of the highest regarded athletes in the world, in your field, fashion, business.
We know all of this from your resume. What's something you wish people knew about you that you couldn't read on your resume?

**Eileen Gu** (2:41)
I think for a long time, there was this sense of wanting to justify my academics as independent from sport.
Initially, it was in the sporting community, I would be the biggest nerd. I was always helping people with homework. I was known as this academic person. Then over time, as I became more well-known, I think the general assumption or presumption that maybe we hold socially as a society is that, you know, athletes maybe go to school, but they don't really go to school, like that kind of just like implication. I think undercutting that was harder for me, and at the same time really important just because at my core, I think of myself more as an intellectual person who chose to do sports and to apply that cerebral take in an athletic context. It could have been something else versus an athlete who thinks they are smart. I think that's an important distinction to make. So I think one thing for me was getting into Stanford when I was 16, and doing that before the Olympics so that I had my, what would have been my senior year and then a gap year.
So those two years to be full-time, that was my first time being pro as in full-time as an athlete. Before that, I was Monday through Friday in school, just totally normal. I was the first person in our high school's history to graduate early to kind of make that situation work. But it was not because it was an Olympic accommodation, it was because I had done the credits and found a way to graduate early and that was really special as well. So I think what's misunderstood is maybe that how much, to the extent that I value education and seeing that as like the fundamental layer and building on top of that.

**Jay Shetty** (4:24)
As a young girl, were you always athletically and academically inclined at the same time? Were they two paths that always existed?