Kate Queeney
Contributing Writer
As Chair of Smith’s Committee on Athletics, I think a lot about the roles sports play on our campus. Watching the Pioneers basketball team play in the NEWMAC tournament here at home gave me a lot to think about.
If you go to the basketball team’s website and watch their season preview video, the first thing you see is senior co-captain Sydney Parkmond saying that the team’s goal is to win the NEWMAC Championship. My reaction upon seeing that video for the first time this past fall was, essentially, “Yikes.” It’s one thing to have that goal, but to tell everyone about it?
When the team struggled at the start of their season, I felt sorry for them, because it seemed clear their goal was out of reach. And when the championship game slipped away even after the team had battled back to lead the conference, I was even more convinced that. Actually, that I was horribly wrong ever to doubt the wisdom of what they did.
What is to be gained by going public with a big goal that you might not reach? Everything. Setting big goals is part of personal growth, and a goal isn’t really big enough for this purpose if you’re assured of achieving it. If you don’t believe in your goal enough to tell other people about it, I’m not sure you believe enough in your own ability to get there. Sharing gives other people the opportunity to support you, and to be there, literally or figuratively, at the moment of truth.
Smithies have a lot of truly big goals. Many of us are taking a risk just by joining this community, whether we’re striving to graduate from college or to earn tenure. With goals so grand the college works hard to ensure our success, but even such a “safety net” doesn’t make the goal feel any less risky.
There is a power, though, in learning to set some goals that carry an actual risk of failure. The failure shouldn’t be catastrophic; I suspect the basketball team woke up the next day still feeling their loss, but they got up and went about the business of being Smith students. Failure also isn’t a necessary outcome — the basketball team put together a fantastic season and almost won the championship game, after all.
The power of these goals is what they teach you about yourself. If you routinely stretch yourself to try for things hard enough that you legitimately might not make it, you will almost certainly expand your ideas of your own potential. Sports are one great way to do this, but there are many other ways to stretch yourself both inside and outside the classroom. When faculty talk about how we wish our students would “take more risk,” I think this is what we mean. We want you to write the paper on a topic you’re less comfortable with, to try the independent project that might not actually work out. But you can also practice taking risks on things that don’t even carry a grade. Play a solo, speak in public, write an editorial, and yes, try to win a championship.
A final observation from the NEWMAC basketball game: as it looked increasingly clear that the Pioneers weren’t going to win, the Smith crowd got louder, not quieter. The spirit that kept our crowd on its feet is the same spirit I see when Smithies with no connection to chemistry show up to our department’s Honors thesis defenses to support their friends who are presenting. It brings you out to watch your fellow Smithies’ performances in the arts, and it prompts you to give up part of your Saturday to see your friends’ posters at Collaborations. It brought to the crowd that day a lot of Smith athletes whose teams never draw that kind of visible support.
Also in the crowd that day were people with official job descriptions like teaching engineering and economics, running the career center, overseeing admissions and financial aid, directing spiritual life, and even running the entire college. At their core, though, our jobs are all simply about supporting you. So while you’re working toward those important goals of graduating from college and making your future, think about taking some time to set a really big goal that you might not be able to reach. And then tell some of us about it. Maybe we can help you get there, or maybe all we can do is support you along the way and celebrate with you when you succeed. And if you fail, we will be there to help you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and try again. Either way, you will continue to inspire us to take our own risks, and to change our own perceptions of what we are capable of, the same way Syd and her teammates inspired me this winter.
