Playing the game

There's a lot of talk these days about competition, particularly in education.  Some will tell you that you should never, ever promote competition within the classroom.  Others will say that life is competitive, and kids need to learn to both win and lose, so competition is extremely important.  I don't really fit in either of those courts.

If you ask anyone who knows me half-decently well if I'm competitive, their response will be something like, "Terri competitive?  Is grass green?  Is the sky blue?  Did the Bombers completely tromp all over the Riders at the Banjo Bowl?  Does the officiating in the CFL totally suck?"  (In case you're not sure, the answer to all those questions is a huge, resounding YES!)  I don't remember ever not being competitive.  I think part of it lies in a desire to be noticed and acknowledged.  A lot of it is just my personality.  All I know is that as soon as we started getting marks on tests, I would compare my mark to others' marks.

I quickly learned, even in elementary school, who the other top students were.  School came easily to me, so they became the ones I compared myself to.  From about grade four to seven, my main "competitor" was Danny.  He was the first person whose mark I checked.  I also had a crush on Danny.  I'm not sure if I had a crush on him because he was also at the top of the class, or if that was just a coincidence.  All I know is that in grade eight, he seemed to become less concerned with getting top marks, and at about the same time, I lost interest in him (though I still thought he was very cute right up to graduation).

I quickly found others who I could compete against.  The desire to be the best drove my study.  If I slacked off, someone else might do better.  I never wished for them to do poorly.  I just wanted to be better.  And it worked.  When I graduated, I also walked away with the Governor General award.

Then I got to college.  Suddenly I had no idea who was sitting at the top of the class.  The competition factor was gone.  I still made honour roll, but my marks were definitely not what they could have been.

My feelings about being the best have changed somewhat, but I still use competition to drive me.  Not so much at university.  I know that, given different life circumstances, I could do better than I do.  I have had to accept that my marks, even though they are still exceptional, are not what they could be.  But there are more important things in life.

Photo by Ryandavid Photography.

Triathlon, now that's a different story.  I know who is close to me in ability.  Rhonda, a close friend, has traditionally been one of them.  That's us.  I made a copy of that picture with the phrase "Come and get me!" on it.  I gave Rhonda a copy, and put the other one on my fridge as a training motivator.  This past summer, though, Rhonda's work schedule didn't mesh with the race schedule, so I focused on another main competitor - Kim.  Since we're also good friends, I also am well aware of how hard Kim trains.  Knowing the effort she puts in makes me work harder at my workouts.  And I am always conscious of where she is in a race.  In my drive to come in ahead of her, I have pushed myself until I was sick.  I know I definitely go harder to try to beat her.  But if she came ahead, it wouldn't upset me.  It would just mean it was her day.  She had put the work in, and reaped the benefits.

I'm not sure where I learned how to compete without wishing ill on my competitors, without cheating, without being hung up in the win or the loss, but I suspect it was from my mom.  It wasn't from school.  I don't recall it ever being dealt with.  I competed in the local music and arts festival, though, from the time I was six years old, and my mom was almost always by my side.

I won my very first class I was ever in.  I had been playing the piano for only a few months, but I was good.  But my mom always made sure that when I won, I did so humbly.  And lost without pouting or quitting.  I'll never forget my very first speech arts class.  I said my poem.  I didn't win.  I think I got 81 or 82.  (We got marked.  85 was good.  Anything above the was in the exceptional range.  80 was about as low as they would give you.)  I said that I was never going to do speech arts again.  Mom basically told me, lovingly, to not be a poor loser, and yes, I was doing that again next year.  It took some work, but by high school, I was scoring in the exceptional range.

I went to provincials.  I won some provincial classes and lost some.  I learned that marks are subjective.  I learned that, especially once you reach a certain level, adjudications are opinions.  You listen with respect, you take what you think will help you and you leave behind that which won't.  I learned that just because you are the best this morning, that doesn't mean you will be the best tomorrow.  Or even this afternoon.  And I learned not to place my worth in someone else's opinion, because that's all it is - an opinion.  I learned that if someone else beat me, that didn't mean I was a bad person, or even that I was bad at what I do.  Maybe I hadn't given the proper effort in my practicing.  Or maybe, in that moment, everything just came together for the other person in a better way than for me.  Or (as can be the case at festival), maybe the adjudicator was simply drawn to his or her performance more than mine, and it may have been for some reason that had nothing to do with us at all.

I wish, instead of arguing about whether competition is good or bad, we would focus on teaching healthy competition.  Not everyone is competitive.  I understand this.  But there are some of us who are, and telling us that we should be less competitive isn't going to work, nor would it even be beneficial.  That competitive nature is what drives us to be better on all accounts.  On the other hand, teaching how to use that competitive drive in a positive way, to use it to not only be better at what we are doing, but to be a better person through it, now that is a lesson worth teaching.