If you read my apologia or have known me since the late 1990s or before, you know that Mr. Clifton was and is my favorite teacher and holds a great deal of responsibility for my interest in the field of education. Therefore, it should come as no surprise to you that it is always a pleasure to hear from him. The last time I heard from him was a little different. One innocuous tweet unearthed an old wound and spurred hours of deep thought about things that somehow escaped mention in my apologia.
…just heard from Darnell…hard to believe we are (13) years removed from the dirigible incident…
The “dirigible incident” which he alluded to had to do with the last spelling bee I took part in. Before you take any shots at me, yes, I was one of “those” kids. I partook in Spelling Bees, Speech Meets, and Math Olympics. And without tooting my own horn, I was pretty good. Going into 6th grade, I won all four spelling bees I had entered, took home three blue ribbons at the speech meet, and won two of the three math competitions I had entered. However, victory did not bring with it a sense of accomplishment or relief. Of course I enjoyed success, but each victory brought with it a greater pressure to accomplish more. That really came to a head by early 1999.
With the ACSI spelling bees, victory did not end in the classroom for 5th through 8th grade students. There were three additional rounds: the “stage” round (for the first and second place finishers in the 5th through 8th grade competitions), the regional spelling bee (which the top four stage finishers qualified for), and the ACSI National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C.
That spelling bee was the hardest fought of any spelling bee I had entered. Katie Prosapio and I fought tooth and nail for rounds and rounds before I finally bested her. Neither of us had any time to recover. It was off to the stage!
I drew the 8th (and best) seat for that round. Even if I got my word wrong, there was the off chance that I’d already have qualified thanks to four people before me missing their words. Sadly, nobody had missed by that point.
My word was dirigible. To this day I contend that the spellmaster mispronounced it. That is irrelevant. I misspelled the word and was eliminated.
To say I was crushed would be an understatement. For a number of years I was a fairly big fish in a small pond. Not only did I feel the pond expanding, I could see the fish growing around me. I followed up the letdown at the spelling bee with a (much less desired) red ribbon and a “thanks for trying” honorable mention in the math competition. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t achieving my goals.
The losses of 1999 created a dramatic rebranding in me. I could not carry on in that way any longer. I absolutely could not handle losing. It ate at me. The mere thought of potential loss completely consumed me to the point of reduced functionality. Things needed to change. That was the end of spelling bees, speech meets, and math competitions.
I know that it is very difficult to change overnight. However, it is much simpler to shift some things around in order to create that change. It would’ve been unreasonable for me to believe that I needed to immediately stop being competitive. That just doesn’t go away. It WAS reasonable to believe that I could channel my competitive juices elsewhere. And thus, the Jakob Duehr that you know and possibly tolerate was created.
Do I still hate losing? Absolutely. It still riles me every time my Seahawks lose. Just imagine how it would be if I were actually competing myself! But I try my best to stay as uncompetitive as possible when it comes to other people. Sure, I do the fantasy football thing, but my interest in that has waned over time. Games and competitions against other people fail to interest me because I have spent the better part of the last 13 years in another game. I am constantly at battle with myself. I set goals for myself, and I am consistently trying to be a better Jakob than the Jakob I used to be.
Running has been a great thing for me in that regard. I have a tangible and objective way of determining how much better I have become. This week I ran a 5k in just over 21 minutes. That is 3 minutes better than the time I ran on New Year’s Eve in Matteson, which was 2 minutes faster than the previous best time. I am constantly setting new goals for myself. You may call that being a malcontent. I call it a creative way to channel my competitive energy.
Sure, some people may call me obsessive, and in some regards they would be right. I have had the tendency to burn out at times. I have also tended to have such tunnel vision in regards to my continuous self-competition that I have neglected other areas of my life. Rest assured that part of self-competition is that I am always trying to get better. I’ll wage war on those areas, and I believe I will emerge victorious.
I got a follow up tweet from Mr. Clifton. It read as follows:
…[you] would have been dominant in 7th grade… D.C. Fo Sho…
While I appreciate the sentiment, I likely wouldn’t have. The fear of loss would’ve consumed me, and the competition was steadily improving. Even if I had won, the fleeting contentment I would have gotten from the victory would not have been worth it. Could things have been different? Maybe. But I’m fine with the way things worked out.
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