My daughter is joining a memory competition this morning at school. This is the second competition she has joined in a week. The first one was clay crafts. It's more like a rebound of some sort when she missed school last week of January due to flu.
Memory competition as she explained to me is the ability to write more words as much as possible, time-pressured, in their correct spelling. Numerics included except the numbers per se. She had a dry run yesterday. Given 4 pages, she's able to fill 3. That's "good enough but can be better" according to her coach. As if this remark resonates in her young mind, it was obvious she wanted to memorize more words. She tried to beef up her memory by remembering mnemonics she learned from class--rhymes, action words, stories, addition, subtraction, etc--all in the hope of "filling" the 4th page. I had to remind her not to overdo it.
This morning as we were walking towards her bus stop, she confessed feeling not confident she could fill the 4th page. I could sense that she's overwhelmed with pressure. She told me she might not win this time. I paused for a while searching for the right words to say. I remember Vince in Grease saying, "It doesn't matter if you win or lose, it's what you do with your dancin' shoes." I can't tell her that! What about, "it doesn't matter if you win or lose, it's how you play the game." Neither! She will question both those flimsy answers. Finally, I assured her it doesn't matter if she wins or not, it's how she enjoyed sitting with other kids out of the classroom without the prying eyes of her teacher! Almost instantly, she smiled.
"The most important motive for work in the school and in life is the pleasure in work..." Albert Einstein said that. My daughter comes home from school and tells me she's nominated to compete in a particular contest. That's great! But never will I insist that she enlist in some competition knowing that she will not have fun.
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