Since it’s ungodly slow right now and there’s very little to talk about from a market perspective, I’ll tell you about a very important life lesson… that I learned 25 years later.
I was a pretty good tennis player in high school. I didn’t accomplish much during freshman year, playing exclusively on the JV team, but I felt like I was ready to make the varsity team in my sophomore year.
If you’ve ever played tennis on a high school or college team, you probably had to contend with a ‘ladder’ – basically, the coach would rank everyone on the team from 1 through 25, and the top nine guys would play varsity. For example, if you were ranked 13, you could beat the number 12 guy, the number 11 guy, the number 10 guy, and the number 9 guy, and then you could get on the varsity team.
So during sophomore year, I showed up to the first practice and looked at the ladder. I was ranked 24 out of 25.
Ridiculous. I was clearly a better player than that. Objectively speaking, I was much better than that. I complained to the coach, but he told me if I thought I was that good, I just had to beat all the guys on the ladder ahead of me, and then I could play varsity.
Fine, I said, and accepted the challenge.
This post was published at Mauldin Economics on AUGUST 11, 2016.
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