Saturday, November 14, 2015

Peter Diamond Econ 490: Reputation


I would say one of the strongest reputations I ever had was when I was a member of the tennis team in High School.  Coming in as a freshman, I didn't know too many kids on the team, but I was one of the more vocal ones right off the bat.  I was also the best player out of all the freshman and sophomores, so I was named captain as a freshman.  So being captain immediately boosted my reputation, but in sports titles are one thing, but backing it up is a completely different thing.  Once I started winning match after match, and beating some of the top kids in the state, my reputation was pretty high, so much to the point that kids on other teams would come up to me after my match and ask for tips.  I would practice with Varsity, but play matches for the Fresh/Soph team because the coach wouldn't put me on Varsity.  So my reputation was very high among the team, and would only grow as the years went on.

The day when my reputation grew the most was the day of the conference championship.  I breezed my way through the tournament, and won conference (3 matches) while only dropping one game total.  This created some buzz around the conference, and the next day in school the varsity coach pulled me over and said, "can't wait to have you on varsity next year, everybody's talking about your dominant performance."  At that point, I had a reputation of this young stud tennis player, so that everybody in the school knew who I was.  To keep up my reputation throughout high school, and to even enhance it, I kept being voted captain, which meant a leadership role, and I kept winning.  I averaged about two losses on the season, out of 35 matches.  My reputation was solidified when my partner and I were in sectionals trying to get to state, and we were playing two kids who were both going to play D1 tennis the next year.  We ended up winning, and the whole school was talking about it the next day.  The key to keeping up your reputation is consistency.  If you think about all the good athletes who have great reputations, they're all consistent.

When I think about times that I've wanted to stray away from the behavior of my reputation, I can't really think of any.  With my reputation came the cheers for when we won, and not really any blame for when the team lost (because it wasn't my fault).  I got all the interviews with the newspapers, and all the benefits so there wasn't a time when I wanted a break.  I don't know of an example where I could have "cashed it in" by abandoning my reputation completely in order to gain something, so I can't really speak on that.

Everybody has a reputation, good or bad, and for the most part we control it.  So depending on what kind of reputation you want, you have to adjust and make changes to make your reputation desirable.

2 comments:

  1. This example is interesting though you didn't explore the following, which would be worth asking. What caused you to be such a good player? Did you have a coach who made you practice a certain way? Did you have certain physical abilities that made you better than the competition that didn't require practice to maintain? Or perhaps you had figured out tactics that gave you and advantage in your playing. In other words, your essay treats your excellent play as a fact without delving into the cause for the fact. If you did that, you might find a potential moral hazard you overcame.

    Nowadays at the pro level, tennis requires a lot of preparation in physical conditioning, as well as in the other things mentioned above. Since you didn't become, in your expression a D1 tennis player (or did you?), but it sounded like you had the potential to do so, there must have been some reason(s) for that. By exploring that part of the story, you might come to some conclusions other than what you wrote about in your piece.

    Way back when, I was on the tennis team in high school. I missed the junior year by breaking my arm, then played first doubles as a senior. I remember playing the guy who played second singles in a set and beat him. (He was a sub for the real second singles guy who was sick, probably with mono.) So then I played the first singles guy a set and couldn't take a game from him. That put the kibosh to my illusions of being a really good player. Do you have some similar story as to why you're early good success didn't take you all the way to turning pro?

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    1. I would say what caused me to be a good player was a couple of things. One, I think I was pretty naturally gifted. I really didn't have to try that hard to be good, so with a little bit of coaching, I was able to win tournament after tournament. My coach was very good, and actually worked with Arthur Ashe, but it took me a while to realize how good he was.

      When I was younger, I thought I could do it all alone, so I didn't see the benefits of having of coach, and kind of wasted my time during lessons. But as I got to high school I saw all the things that my coach knew that I never took into consideration, and finally put them to use. So my success was definitely a combination of my natural ability and his coaching.

      Regarding why I didn't become a D1 tennis player, that was definitely all my fault. Because winning came so easy at the beginning of my career, I didn't nearly try as hard as I should of. I breezed through matches, without exerting much effort, and thought everything was great. Then when I got to my later years of high school, I was winning in my high school matches, but tournaments started getting harder and harder. The best players play in the USTA tournaments, and those matches were starting to become a challenge for me. As a junior, I kind of made a decision that it was too late to make a final push to become a D1 player, and coasted through the rest of high school happy with my effort and success. I could've played at some D3 schools, but I decided to get a good education instead.

      Finally, regarding why my early success didn't take me all the way to becoming a pro, I think it came when I played against the number 25 player in the nation. I lost 6-2, 6-1. Losing wasn't what made me mad, but the fact that I used to be ranked higher than him, but he tried harder and moved ahead of me. That's what pissed me off. I was mad at myself for not doing my best, and it still frustrates me when I watch the U of I tennis team, because I could've been playing D1 and I threw it away.

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