Motivation II: Tough Luck Harper

Motivation. It comes in different forms. It can come from a desire to do better for ourselves or our loved ones, the spirit of competition, wanting to prove a point, and sometimes it can be, well, not as positive!

I did reasonably well in school, but didn't get really serious about it until college--except for one history class. The material stuck with me even though at first I didn't study. As long as I listened to the teacher’s lectures, I had no problem with the Friday tests.

One Friday halfway through the semester, the teacher started laughing when I turned in my test. I asked him if I did badly. He said, "No, haven't you noticed? Miss Harper wants to finish first, but you keep beating her." I had not noticed. The following week, it was the same thing, except her frustration started to boil over. She wanted my paper graded right away because she didn't believe I could have finished so quickly. I scored 100 and she was MAD. I had a chat with her after class:

Me: Why do you care about my tests?
Harper: I study every night and you’re not…, well, you play sports. You don’t even take your books home.
Me: There’s a book for this class???
Harper: Grrrrrrr

I said that about the book just to aggravate her—I thought she was about to say I wasn’t smart. It was on!!! She was right about one thing, I usually didn’t take my books home. I decided she needed to learn a lesson and I started putting effort into making sure she stayed frustrated. Evil, right?

I began studying for the weekly test to make sure I finished as quickly as possible. Every week I rushed through the test and waited to hear that little groan from Harper. But I never appeared to hurry or appeared to care that I finished first—I was very blasé about it all because I thought that would aggravate her even more. It did.

Harper had to settle for second every week. If she had not been so insulting, I would have held back one week to ease her frustration. But because of her attitude, I dismissed the thought and allowed karma to do its thing through me.

Bonus Story: Another motivation moment came when my parents signed me up for tennis lessons. I was the least experienced player in the group. Most of boys had been playing for years--and the kid with the pastel sweater over his shoulders had been playing his whole life.

But then the coach decided her girls’ class would join us once a month for mixed doubles. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but that motivated me—I didn’t want to look bad in front of the girls. I was teamed with a young lady who was an average player. Together we crushed our opponents and won the mini-tournament that day—beating sweater boy in the finals. He couldn't believe it. His reaction to losing was worse than Harper's—and that motivated me more.

PS: I believe in being gracious in victory and defeat. It's great to learn the lesson about trying your best and being humble. But it's also kind of fun to help certain other people learn that lesson too!!! I don't like poor sports...or arrogance.