As a devoted fan of international hockey, and already nursing my wounds from Arsenal’s previous night’s loss to Bayern in the Champions League, last Thursday afternoon I found myself pausing from time to time\u00a0in order\u00a0to check the score in the Olympic gold-medal game between the Canadian and American women\u2019s teams.\u00a0 It certainly didn\u2019t augur well when Canada was down 2-0 with only a few minutes left, so you can imagine my surprise when I next checked and discovered that the two teams were deadlocked at 2-2, and playing in sudden-death overtime.\u00a0 And yes, at that point I did stop what I was doing in order to watch.\u00a0 What an amazing game, and in the end it was a shame that someone had to lose \u2026 and but for the final 55 seconds of regulation time, not to mention an assist from an exceptionally friendly goal post, it would have been the Canadian women appearing so crestfallen at receiving the silver medals.<\/p>\n
Academic life is so very different.\u00a0 Yes, there are certainly highs and lows, but I don\u2019t think there is anything comparable to the ecstasy of winning or the despair of losing that characterizes major sporting events \u2026 and while there is plenty of stress, there is nothing at all equivalent to the pressure that comes from knowing that you have less than a single minute in which to effect some substantive change. \u00a0\u00a0For most of us the biggest career challenge is obtaining tenure, an endurance contest played out over some five or six years.\u00a0 And there is no similar sense of “winners” and “losers”.\u00a0 Can you imagine, for a moment, an academic version of the Olympic games?\u00a0 Perhaps one event might involve having to write a paper in 60 minutes on a topic that you are given only at the beginning of the hour.\u00a0 Or conferences in which body-checking is permitted!\u00a0 I can envisage a complete revamping of the annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences.<\/p>\n
Of course I jest.\u00a0 But there is something that all of us can\u00a0learn from the example of our women\u2019s Olympic hockey team.\u00a0 Perhaps two things, in fact. The first is that we should never ever abandon hope, no matter how bleak the situation may appear.\u00a0 The academic world is certainly not the entrance to Dante\u2019s Inferno<\/i>, although occasionally one can perhaps be forgiven for seeing certain similarities.\u00a0 And the second is that no one else is going to change our game for us; we have to take the responsibility for doing so ourselves.<\/p>\n
Success can seem so close, but in the end so elusive.\u00a0 As was so often the case, Yogi Berra said it best.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As a devoted fan of international hockey, and already nursing my wounds from Arsenal’s previous night’s loss to Bayern in the Champions League, last Thursday afternoon I found myself pausing from time to time in order to check the score in the Olympic gold-medal game between the Canadian and American women’s teams. It certainly didn’t augur well<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n