assignment 21 - a crushing defeat - cole

Perhaps this is recency bias, but the most significant failure of mine that comes to mind is one that occurred about a week ago at the state speech and debate tournament. The year prior, I was the state runner-up, the perfect combination of successful enough to garner respect, but not quite successful enough to let me rest on my laurels. And I entered this year's state tournament hoping for (and, if I'm being honest, expecting) a state championship. Instead, I waltzed into each of my rounds with the moxie of an odds-on favorite, got totally flustered mid-round, and lost 3 of my 5 rounds, not even "breaking" to the quarterfinal round. It was totally embarrassing, and considering that it will probably be the last tournament that happens until September (unless you count the now-online Tournament of Champions that will be funny for a couple rounds but get annoying very soon thereafter), it's a setback that I'm going to have to live with for a while. It's hard to tell what exactly I have learned from this experience other than not to take success for granted, but as time goes on and I have more time to reflect on it, I'm sure I'll be able to extrapolate a little bit deeper of meaning.