OLYMPIANS AND YOU ARE NOT THAT DIFFERENT! Part II

Based on the Olympians’ job requirements listed in the previous blog, how different are they compared to an academician’s, a business leader’s, or another professional’s with an apostrophe "s"?

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN OLYMPIANS AND YOU
The differences between those requirements are matters of both form and substance. They are manifested primarily in physical form for the athletes and mental form for most of us, except those of you who jog, bike, or snowboard to work everyday. However, there are mental and physical elements in the performance of all of our tasks, even blogging (Ooch, my butt is sooo sore!).

Although there are clear differences in how the requirements are translated into practice, at the most basic level, are the requirements actually that different? “Yup, you bet!” WROOONG! They are generic to many, but probably not all, professions. They transend the characteristics and skills for any specific job and, instead, focus on your attributes and approach to the job.

Here are 3 examples:
Professional Training: An Olympian spends thousands of years in training and national and international competitions and trials to qualify to participate. By comparison, you spent thousands of years in school and other educational activities to qualify for your job and then another thousand in class preparation and teaching, grant writing and research, publishing your work, and professional development events you didn’t want to attend to reach the position of professor or dean.

Competition: We are typically not in direct blood-‘n-guts competition with our peers for recognition and awards like car and real estate salespersons. (Recession Note: The economy has kinda put the kibosh on that competition, at least temporarily.) Ironically, we are usually competing against ourselves, striving to set a personal record or PR (a term coined by athletes) of sorts in our teaching, research, publications, and service.

Awarding of Medals: Although academia doesn’t award medals, there are appropriate awards, such as “Teacher of the Year!,” Nobel Prize in physics, “Most Boring Committee Chair,” and the Mary Kate & Ashley Research Award. However, these awards are few and far between compared to the ton of Olympic medals every 2 years and the bazillion awards in the sports and entertainment industries.

RECOMMENDATION
So what does all of this mean? If you don’t like your job or any of the generic requirements, you have 2 choices: (1) find a better job that doesn’t require commitments, abilities, attitude, training, and sacrifices, or (2) you have 4 years to get on the stick and start training for the next Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Otherwise, stay focused on the M K & A Research Award.

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