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| Jacob M. Abrahamson Class of 2017 |
That is exactly what happened to me and my partner in our first moot court competition at the University of Central Florida. We had practiced and read case law for months and, despite some nervousness, felt great about our performance in the competition. The three teams we faced were all talented and experienced, yet by the end of the night we felt the strength of our arguments would let us win at least enough votes to proceed to day two.
Instead, we lost every ballot. Some of them were close, but we always missed the mark. As you can imagine, our initial reaction was some serious disappointment. Yet our coach, Neil Salyer, did not seem too worried about our loss. For one, our nationals-level team had moved on (and would go on to the final four of the tournament). But he also encouraged us to use our loss to give us something to fight for in next year’s competition. Obviously, if we compete next year there will be some element of avenging our loss. There are even specific teams who I would like to have another opportunity to compete against.
Beyond the more emotional aspect, however, is a lesson in learning from a loss. There are many mistakes we made that we now know how to avoid. For instance, this was my first foray into public speaking, and it helped me understand areas of my performance that require big improvements. My teammate Arsh is great at extemporaneous speaking, which is a huge part of his success in competition, and something that I am not very good at. Having the experience of losing gives me the opportunity to learn from my mistakes and make the necessary improvements before the next competition.
As this blog post may show, I hate losing. It is just in my nature to want to be the best at what I do. However, I can admit that there is a certain art to losing. One has to be able to handle it with grace (which is easier said than done), channel the emotion into energy for your next challenge, and treat it as an opportunity to gain some wisdom from defeat. Among many things, the McConnell Center has taught me to appreciate learning as a never-ending process. Losing, and learning from that loss, is an important part of that overall process. Despite my distaste for it, I am happy to get it out of the way now if it means I can prevent it from happening again.
Jacob Abrahamson is a sophomore McConnell Scholar studying history and political science. He is from Bowling Green, Ky.