Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Above Average!

I have finally succeeded at something in graduate school!

When I was in Junior High, and High School I did four and a half seasons of wrestling. My first season I am pretty sure I was pinned every match and didn't score a single point all season. The second season I was something like 4 and 9 and was probably only pinned half my matches. The third I went up against slightly better competition am pretty sure I was 2 and 12. I don't really remember much about my forth season which was a freestyle season but I am fairly certain that despite beating some redheaded girl and another person with little experience, resulting in my winning the only athletic tournament of my life, it was not a winning season. My fifth season I pinned the first two people I went up against than got ring worm which resulted in me dropping the sport and doing Academic Decathlon instead.

As a grad student I have been taking PE courses though. So far I am taking, or have taken, SCUBA Diving, Beginning Boxing, Mixed Martial Arts, Gymnastics, Swing Dancing, Taekwondo, and Judo. In Mixed Martial Arts, it was pretty clear I was about average. That class however had a fairly intimidating name which resulted in several people with black belts or significant experience in another martial art.

In Judo this semester I have gone up against a total of six people, all about my size, in sparring drills. So far only one put up a real fight, and I suspect would have beat me one out of three matches, the other five I was clearly at an advantage against though. This puts me finally above average at a martial art! Of course this is relative to a much less competitive group of people than being on one of the top high school wrestling teams in the country. Still, I suspect this group of people is more similar to the general public, although most of them were in pretty good shape which is more than I can say for most Americans.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think you are "cherry-picking" your best PE class this semester to brag about. If we average your rank in all three classes you are taking (instead of selecting the best result of the three), you may be about average... I think Swing Dancing brings down the average and Judo brings it up. Though if we rate your swing dancing on desirability as a dance partner instead of skill, then you would be above average once again- easily beating out all the short asian freshman with bad skin, making you above average when considering all PE classes... (I'm leaving this anonymous in case I'm being mean- though I too am above average in Judo and below average in swing dancing.)

By the way, I think Cornell students are above average athletically. They tend to be very motivated people in general, and most have the eating and exercise habits associated with higher income/education groups.

glmory said...

Yes, but if you were to sum up my performance in any athletic event in high school and undergrad than I would have not only been below average, but often near the bottom. The mere fact that I can Cherry Pick and point to something that went reasonably well is quite a step up in the world.

Anonymous said...

Good call. I am impressed with you :-)

I too am very excited about beating almost all my opponents in Judo, as well as and other PE class successes. This never happened when I was on the tennis team in high school.

If only I could be excited about my research progress now...