Everything I need to know about life, I learned from tennis

It is amazing to me that after all these years the lessons I learned while playing tennis can be applied to my experiences in grad school…

Tennis lesson #1: Losing (a.k.a. failure) builds character.

When I first set the goal in 8th grade that I wanted to earn a USTA ranking, I thought it would be a breeze.  Boy, was I wrong.  The first year that I played in all of the requisite tournaments,  I lost in the first round of every single tournament I entered.  No joke.  I must have entered in at least 20 tournaments that year.  That was a whole lot of character building.

I remember when Dad had the “losing builds character” chat with me.  My reply: “But I have enough character!  I just want to win!”  What I didn’t realize at the time was that all of that losing taught me a whole lot more about myself and what my capabilities were than when I started to win, which I did.  Eventually

The wins didn’t come without hard work and determination, and the same goes for grad school achievements.  Whether it is internships or jobs or TA positions or grades, it is always a little bit sweeter when I know I worked hard, and I truly earned it.  Or didn’t earn it.  There have been times this semester where I have longed for things to be easy.  But if I stop and think about it, if all of the things I wanted to be easy actually were, I wouldn’t appreciate them as much.

So losing a match or not getting that killer internship or getting a B on a test is okay every once in a while.  Character is never something you can have too much of

Tennis lesson #2: Learning to put the “ass” in assertive (well, not really;)

When I was playing tennis, everyone was always after me to be more assertive on the court.  To be honest, when people began tossing that word around, I had to look it up to see what it meant.  Achieving this was almost painful for me because I wanted to be friends with my opponents.  Unfortunately, I ended up taking it to the extreme and lost some of the friends I actually did make.

In grad school, I don’t necessarily have opponents anymore in the same way I did in tennis matches.  But I am definitely learning to pick my battles.  Assertiveness is more about being confident and bold.  It is more about doing what is right rather than being mean or disrespectful.  It is more about asking for help when you know you need it or standing up for someone when you know they need it.  It also means humbly admitting when you are wrong, but at the same time not beating yourself up for that wrong.

Tennis lesson #3: At the end of a singles match, whether you win or lose, you are the only person responsible for the decisions you made.

When you are down 0-3 in the first set of a district tournament final, you, my friends, are the only person who can pull yourself out of it.  Mom, dad and brother were never on the court to hold my hand when I had to make a decision about how to over come this hurdle.

The same goes for grad school, and well, life in general.  I think I’ve known for a while that I need to listen to my intuition.  The trick for me has been trusting it.  A super-d-duper wise person in my life recently told me that there are no right answers.  There is no path that I need to follow.  I’m creating the path as I go.  Scary, yes, but it all comes back to faith.  For me that is increasing everyday.

Baby steps, Majorsky, baby steps

I hope all is well with everyone!  After spring break in Florida, I will have just over six weeks left in the semester.  It will be tough, but now it is time to apply the lessons above

Much love from CoMo,

Kathleen

~ by kmaj18 on March 26, 2010.