A short life (lesson?)

Dear assembled computer sitters who may or may not be putting themselves in an ideal situation for long term success,

As you may have guessed I am looking forwards to being rambling and preachy in the following letter. Please do benefit from my blithe radiance; what is a young college male if not an arbiter of truth and worldliness?

Disclaimed: we may continue.

We all go through life with some set of rules that govern our direction, and by recently changing one of mine ended up in Spain. I would like to think that this could be useful to others.

The original rule was a fairly emphatic "do what you're good at". This led me to join the Whitman debate team, and experience success there. Partially through my efforts and skill, and to a larger extent due to the fantastic coaching staff at Whitman, I was able to compete at a high level, and with contributions from me Whitman won the national school title in parliamentary debate. (This is not actually the primary focus of the activity, but in my eyes and others quite an achievement nonetheless.)

When the last season ended we were a very young squad, obviously having done well and still returning all of our top teams. Instead of continuing in the activity I quit, and in hindsight did so to great profit.

Why? The activity took to much of my time, and the main redemptive draw was only victory. It distracted from academics, from developing writing skills, from maintaining healthily varied interpersonal relationships, from sleep, and many other things. That's not to say that it destroyed them, but it made normal function difficult to accomplish.

At the time the activity did seem worth it. Who doesn't like to win? A part of all of us is just a cookie-monster for that kind of external validation, and I was having me a decent omnomnom.

Here's the catch though, the trade is not between being successful at one thing and not being so at any other. Given enough time, energy, and confidence most people can do a fantastic job at many things. For me, I had replaced potential success in many other areas of life with debate success. Debate is fairly limited in scope, and there are many other things that I would enjoy more, and benefit more from. One of them for example, might be learning conversational Spanish.

At one point I would not have realized this potential. When you are in the glow of positive feedback, it is very easy to stay there and continue enjoying whatever kind of validation source is streaming its scrumptious goodness in your direction. What I was able to realize is that despite seeming to be a very positive experience, debate was far from the best, or even a respectably highly situated undertaking for me.

I quit and went to Spain. My rule changed from "Do what you are good at" to "Do what is best for you". Maybe this is an obvious one for you guys to see, but for me it definitely wasn't, since winning/being successful/seizing the heck out of one particular day does not necessarily equate to an ideal, or even good situation. I think that by being able to assess priorities and differentiate good from ideal, we can enjoy much more fulfilled lives.

That's my two cents at least.

Thanks for reading, and go consider breaking your routine mold if you think you're stuck. Considering it doesn't hurt, and the smallest changes can be surprisingly positive.

-Tim