The New Year Quote by Sasha Cohen

The flex here is quiet, almost administrative: a life that sounds less like adolescence and more like shift work. Cohen’s sentence is built out of time blocks and obligations, the language of planners and practice logs, which is exactly the point. By presenting an extraordinary regimen in ordinary terms, she normalizes extremity. “I’m used to” doesn’t just describe a schedule; it signals adaptation, a body and mind trained to treat sacrifice as routine.

The subtext is the trade-off American sports culture loves to romanticize but rarely itemizes. Four hours at the rink, then “public school for two hours” a few days a week: education becomes an accessory, squeezed into the margins of the real job. She’s not attacking school, but the math speaks for itself. The line carries a faint defensiveness too, as if anticipating the adult question: Are you still a normal kid? “Public school” reads like a credential, proof of groundedness, even as the schedule reveals how far from normal her day-to-day is.

Context matters: figure skating in the U.S. has long demanded early specialization, private coaching, travel, money, and relentless repetition - all wrapped in the aesthetic of effortless grace. Cohen’s quote punctures that illusion. The pristine performance on competition day is backed by a labor schedule that would exhaust most adults. She doesn’t dramatize it, which is why it lands: discipline as identity, and ambition expressed not through big dreams, but through hours.