Disappointment

Monday night, almost midnight. Just came back from my Monday night classes some time ago and, after grabbing some light dinner and providing some additional comments to the marketing case that my group is turning in tomorrow, I am about to go to bed. I am exhausted.

It’s been a tough day essentially due to my trip to Austin, Texas, with the soccer club during the weekend. It has been my first visit to the “lone star state”. Austin is a nice city. Full of students and with a very long street full of watering holes on both sides. I didn’t go out much, though, just for dinner and some drinks on Saturday night after being defeated. The weekend has been nice overall although much worse – or disappointing, more accurately – than expected. We did not play well and we didn’t even make it through to the quarter finals but that’s the small part. I guess I have learnt some other stuff that I hope will help me in the future.

For nearly a month me and two of my colleagues have been organizing the whole trip, putting in more hours than what people think. Paying tournament fees, collecting money from people, booking hotels, arranging for the rental of vans for the whole team or looking for the best deals to fly to Austin for all players. Once in Austin, it was up to us, as the club captains, to buy food and refreshments, taking care of our stuff, being on top of everything so that all runs smoothly and, more importantly (as it has proved this time), trying to keep everybody happy when it comes to playing games.

We are just a bunch of friends traveling together to have a good time. We definitely want to win tournaments but, above all, at least in my view, it is all about having a great time playing my favorite sport. The previous two tournaments had been smooth and I was expecting the same thing. However, things do not always go as one wishes and when it comes to “leading” – I put it into quotation marks because, as I have said, before captains we are just friends taking care of the stuff and trying to make people have fun – 18 business school students (each of them with that stupid leader inside of ours and, additionally, when it comes to soccer, the coach in each of us) the outcome has proven completely unexpected this time.

Everything is easy when you win but when it is the time to lose just because the opponents are better things are not that smooth. This is exactly what happened last weekend. It’s amazing how some people, grown up men, may lose their temper and focus, criticize team mates and bitch captains in their face. I guess that certain analogies may be drawn with work life in this respect. Maybe I have learnt something. Well, I have in fact learnt the kind of people I wouldn’t like to work with. One knows about those people from his previous work experience but these situations probably help to keep the eyes wide open.

No more philosophy for tonight. I am going to bed. My whole body is sore and my raspberries in arms and legs won’t let me move much.

Ciao