Studying and Sports

Inspired by the web series Gullak, I have been thinking about a sportsman-like attitude to studies, academia, and preparation for the workforce, where an attitude of a game is taken towards the whole enterprise of studying hard, getting good grades, maintaining good extracurriculars, having good references, maintaining achievements, and securing good placement in schools or jobs. That being said, there are varying degrees of the serious-ness of attitude that people take towards sports, but they are surely not awarded the same degree of seriousness as practical life affairs, such as marriage, divorce, birth, illness, death, divorce, politics, arguments, or careers. All the way from middle school, or perhaps earlier, starting in elementary school, to college and beyond, developing individuals typically have the opportunity to be immersed in a school-type setting in which there are students, resources, hope, motivation, and a range of attitudes and feelings. While there are some for whom the process is too arduous or rife with economic and social challenge for going through school to seem like a game, provided that a student has enough funds and a supportive family and social structure, he or she can begin to adopt a playful attitude towards the innumerable host of possibilities that the future holds, engaging and tackling opportunities that come their way. Perhaps it can even be said that even the lives of those who go through difficulty, such as financial or social, are those of people playing sports, though the analogy is hard to extend when it comes to hard-hitting facts of life, such as violence, trauma, illness/death, arguments, community strife, or other tragedy.

Whether it be through studying regularly from a textbook, competing against others in Olympiads, or writing one's own ideas and theories down, the practice that a person participates in in effort of striving towards the goal of becoming competent or proficient in a skillset that is likely to enable a person to find a job or get into a good school, that person can be described as playing the sport which is the subject of today's post. The primary differentiator between the attitude which a normal might take towards studying or learning and that which a "sportsman" might take is that the sportsman is likely to participate in the same tasks with greater zeal and playful competitiveness, potentially proceeding with greater engagement and intensity in the same tasks that one without a similar attitude might. What separates a sport from a non-sport activity or task is the possibility of winning, losing, or drawing. The person training for a sport dedicates hours preparing for competition in an environment like that in which the final sport will be played. The outcome of this sport is not clearly defined, but can be calculated or inferred, quantitatively or qualitatively, based on factors measured about the individual's life in settings ranging from the set of final grades received on a transcript to the level of energy the person has in daily life to the nature of the social interactions with friends and strangers.

If the necessary fiscal, temporal, and social needs are at one's disposal, which are likely to be, say, in the case of a student newly entering college, then undertaking one's life with an attitude of adventurous and brash competitiveness as though the expectations of what one is to proceed with over the course of the next few years are sport-like in nature, flexible as circumstances often are in early adulthood, is likely to bring about attitudes of open-mindedness and excitement that lead to exploration, freedom, and a branching out along multiple streams of life, intellectual, career-oriented, social, political, familial, spiritual/religious, artistic, financial, and conscious, that are likely to burgeon into sturdy branches, with the help of which one can structure their life. However, one potential deterrent from an individual undertaking this attitude is a petrifying fear of the future or the feeling of self-exclusion that one encounters when looking in awe upon those who far exceed one's own competence. An effective countervailing response to this attitude, however, is the possibility of one growing into an individual of increased capacity who counters these feelings of inferiority with discipline and effort that establish a track record that disestablishes the validity of such attitudes. Overall, the intersection of sports with an individual's academic and early career life can be likely to usher the person into his/her proximal zone of development, where they can learn more, competitively develop their skillset, become prepared for their job, and develop into a person who is career- and life-prepared.