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| Silver Medalist Mckayla Maroney (London, 2012) |
267. Kahneman and Tversky observed that "the nearer you came to achieving a thing, the greater the regret you experienced if you failed to achieve it" (267). Have you ever had the agonizing experience of coming up just short of a goal? Has your frustration in such a situation ever been great enough that you almost wished you hadn't competed?
I don’t believe that there is anyone on this earth that has not experienced the agony of coming just short of a goal. One instance that I can think of is playing Mario Kart with my siblings and placing second right at the end of the race. This feeling makes you want to set the controller down and not start another round. The sources of this feeling should be something that matures alongside you but it never truly vanishes from your mind.
ReplyDeleteRachel Wallis
One of my most important coming up short experiences was this past year with my high school mock trial team. The team was made up of 3- and 4- year members, and we had worked for hours and hours to practice and prepare. We made it to the third round of competition, Semi-Finals, which was the farthest a team from my high school had been in years. Unfortunately, we did not make it past that round. Initially, we all had the disappointment that we had come so far, only to fail. That we could have, and should have, done better. I think after that initial disappointment, we all were just proud that we had done so well, and were in the top 8 teams in the state. I think that in general, all “second-place” disappointments are short-lived and quickly replaced with joy for how well you did.
ReplyDelete-Michael Draper
Playing football basically my entire life, I have had these experiences. Each game is its own beast and our motto my Senior year in high school was "One step at a time" and each game was a "Step". Most of us who started had been playing together since we were 6 years old and we had good chemistry, so being our last year we thought we could get us somewhere. We head into our last game of the regular season with the chance to win district, and while we still won the game, we had dropped into third due to outside factors. It is still a major feat to try and make the playoffs in Texas High school football, but we lost our first game in the playoffs, and we were all bummed but over time it got better. It was hard on a lot of us because we had put a lot of time in and we had to many mistakes and lost that game. And now playing at the college level, last year we had a lot of really close games at first, and it got hard on everyone as we tried to work for that first win. It has never made we want to quit but it gets hard when it is such a close game.
ReplyDeleteI believe that everyone has had that experience. Whether they got second or worse. Ive had that experience four years in a row on my academic team. We were so close three of those years. I had thought about leaving the team, but I didn’t. It got into some of the others’ heads and they quit the team. I would say that the experience of coming so close to the finish but not make it effects some people more than others.
ReplyDeleteComing so close to an achievement, and falling short is nothing short of a bittersweet ending. Hopefully if someone is spending so much time and effort in a specific situation, they enjoy it.
ReplyDeleteMy personal situation of falling short is when I spent over 100+ hours on a robot. My school’s FIRST robotics team, #6891, had me type, document, and record meetings for most of the season, then I completed the electrical components of the robot so it can actually be powered to move.
Due to COVID-19, we didn’t even get to compete! It was the best robot that our team had ever constructed, and all for (pretty much) nothing. Yes, I was frustrated, sad, and disappointed, but I would always do it again-- even if I already knew the outcome. I enjoyed the people, experiences, and the things I learned. It was a blessing to be a part of the team. Thankfully I enjoyed this experience, but I sure wish I had seen it compete.
I’ve had several of these experiences, but the one that sticks with me the most happened my sophomore year. My track team that year qualified for state in the 3200m relay. We had previously medaled and broken our school record the year before and we seemed to be on path to do so again. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. We were in 5th place at the state meet when our anchor received the baton and she stayed in that position all the way until the last 100m stretch of the race. When she came around the curve to start the final stretch we were all so excited because we were going to medal again, but about 10m from the finish line two runners passed her causing us to miss meddling by tenths of a second. Initially, I was so upset that all of the workouts and miles leading up to this seemed wasted that I didn’t even realize I had set a new personal time split and that we were still top 10 in the state, which is no small achievement. Looking back on it I still get frustrated, but am proud to have done so well and proud of the efforts of our relay team.
ReplyDeletePlaying sports growing up can help you understand this I believe. The closer you get to winning, the more you realize that you could have actually won if you may have tried a little harder. I often think it's worse to lose by a little than to lose by a lot. Playing baseball in high school we didn't expect to win a lot of games as we didn't have many players on the team. Coming up one win short of making regionals often felt worse than not being close to making it at all.
ReplyDeleteThe experience that comes to mind was a band competition where my band had finish in second place with only a 0.25 point difference between us and the first place band. It was disappointing because like others have said we could of done better but I didn't regret competing.
ReplyDeleteI have actually gone through the agony of coming up just short of my goal three times in high school. I am the proud recipient of three State runner-up medals in various activities. The first time I came up just short was my junior year of high school in Speech and Debate. My cousin and I were performing a humorous duet act together, and we had just received three first place votes in the regional tournament. We were going into state knowing that we had a good shot at winning. It turns out we ended up receiving state runner-up not only my junior year, but also my senior year. (Fun fact: we lost to fellow honorable Brandon Prine both years). The third time I placed state runner-up in high school was in baseball, and that loss was especially brutal because we lost to our biggest rivals in the championship game. Even though each of our losses were awful, I would never say that I became frustrated enough to wish I had not even completed it. Sure, second is not as good as first, but it is sure a lot better than not placing at all.
ReplyDeleteThis wasn’t necessarily a big second place loss, but it was still painful. I played tennis in high school. Our girls team was in the 5a class, while the boys were in the 4a class. The two classes had a big difference. For the girls, 5a was considerably more challenging. There were huge schools in 5a. This year, we finally got moved back down to 4a, and things were looking pretty good. Our team was good this year, we had been working and playing much more challenging schools that what we might play in 4a. We were practicing harder, looking forward to the season. And then it got cancelled. It was frustrating to be working and waiting in the other years for the exact moment, only for it to be completely canceled. We were so close to a great season!
ReplyDeleteIt has happened to me before, but I have been lucky to find an upside in most instances. From an economist’s perspective, you would be charged with weighing the costs and benefits of the scenario. In such a situation, it is important to ensure that you are gaining experience during the process of competing, but there are many cases in which nothing is gained and only time is lost. - Darian Shaw
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