Fond Freshman Memories

All of us are shaped by the social experiences we've had as part of groups or organizations: schools, colleges, workplaces, clubs, teams,etc.

I've been fortunate to belong to some great organizations: universities, athletic teams, societies, government agencies, publications, and others where I've learned a lot and formed lasting relationships. Most of it that's worth mentioning, you'd find on my resume. But resumes are generally dull. They're lists that don't tell much of a story.

Whenever I look back, there is always one organizational experience out of dozens that stands out in my mind as my favorite from over 16 years ago: the Hickman High School tennis team. I've never really delved into why I have these unwaveringly sunny memories of this time, but as an older, more experienced student of organizations and management I've come to some realizations that are fairly interesting. The reasons, which are many, are telling in a psychological sense. I'd be surprised if some of you don't identify.

In the spring of 1994, I was a ninth grader who played on the junior varsity tennis squad for Hickman High School in Columbia, Missouri. But I attended West Junior High School, which is some miles down the road. West Junior was grades 7-9 while Hickman was grades 10-12. Ninth grade athletes with talent and potential from West Junior were allowed to play JV or varsity sports at Hickman with the older students if they made it through tryouts.

In reality I made it through the cut-throat tryouts, when about 25 tennis players were whittled down to 16, more due to potential than talent. The coach told me so, and I was actually bottom-feeding at number 15 on the depth chart, where the top 8 were varsity and lower 8 were JV. A good friend of mine got cut because I took a set off him 6-4 after having being down 4-1 in tryouts, and we were never that friendly again. An 11th grade kid who was much better than me, and as a 16 year-old had a car and drove me to tryouts, was cut too because he was expected to have less playing years.

Right off the bat I got an inflated sense of my 14 year-old self. Man, I'm gonna take the bus with the very few West Junior kids who get to leave school early (everyone would see me) to make it to sports practice at the high school in time. The high school where I might be going the following year. Where everyone was older and cooler. Where the girls were hotter. Where people drove cars, had jobs, and their own money. All of which was new to me. And exciting. I was gonna be a player at that level when I walked those halls, at the junior high school as well as the high school.

Things only got better from that initial euphoria, which helped salve the pain from being cut from the basketball team the previous winter, something I had wanted more badly. As Indian kids growing up across America and their parents know, chances are you're not going to be a great basketball or football player due to your size. But we could be dominant at tennis to get that jock fix in addition to high SAT scores. Sure enough there were several other Indian kids on the tennis team too- one of whom was a habitual cheater who called every ball out when you played him.

What I liked the most by far, and the reason I am writing about it today, is that the two hours of practice every afternoon and the matches against other schools were bar none the most fun, yet grueling experience I'd had in my life till then and probably since. Nearly everyone on the team was better than me. Every stroke, every serve, every volley and every drill I had to put in 110% to stay afloat. And I relished it. I learned like crazy from the other guys, each with their different style, and a great coach. My learning curve was steep because I had barely played before. I was made fun of quite a lot, as the youngest and nearly worst player, but that motivated me. It forced me to be clever socially, and step up on the court to gain respect. And every single day that season, I was getting stronger and better.

During drills, I got to practice with and watch everyone from top to bottom. Occasionally I'd do well enough to hit a few strokes against the varsity guys, getting crushed but nonetheless learning and getting better. I had to play out of my mind just to rally against the guys a few slots above me.

And I looked up to those guys like nothing else. It was awesome getting car rides with the music blasting, or taking long bus trips to rural areas of the state, learning everything about what high school would be like and goofing around. And I was part of a team with a sense of camaraderie and purpose I'd never seen before. I was having a (tennis) ball.

And we were pretty damn good. Both JV and Varsity teams went undefeated through the season, and barely had to break a sweat to do so. We romped over any school because at every position, singles and doubles we were just better. Our top few players were ranked at the state level. The varsity won the state playoffs without too much trouble that year. We hardly even bothered asking each other about winning or losing. It was just sequences of numbers: instead of stating the set score, "Oh yeah I won 6-3, 6-2" we just said "3 and 2." More often than not we just heard "donuts," meaning 6-0, 6-0, or "bagels" to make fun of our coach, who was a health food nut who'd get on anyone's case for uttering the word "cola." Earning donuts and bagels became our reason for being to impress our teammates because winning wasn't really in question. We traveled around Missouri and demoralized people. And as the bottom feeder fluctuating between #13 and #15, I was generally better than the other team's scrubs were. At one point I remember our JV team taking on another school's varsity and spanking them.

This success was probably a combination of coincidence, when the school just happened to have a particular stellar crop of talent, and strong coaching. There was also a culture that developed, as anyone who's been a part of a legacy of sports champions at any level would understand. Those of us on the team were cocky, and though in most schools being a tennis player probably isn't the same as being a star quarterback, we still walked around with a gangster swagger. Tennis players, being few and far between at that age, also had a mystique. It's part of the reason why we could win so easily. I must have worn my tennis uniform to school 3-4 days a week.

I really liked this particular position of being near the bottom of a truly excellent team. I didn't want practices or matches or team bus trips to ever end. I wanted to just be around these guys all the time- there was nothing else I wanted to do with myself more than that, besides traveling to India in the summer. My position worked well for me and my world view, and as the season went on it became clear my upside was being noticed. The coach and some of the best players were openly guessing that one day, perhaps Junior or Senior year, I would be the #1 singles player at Hickman. Even so, I was still getting pinned down and mooned on bus rides by the Seniors.

Another factor is that it was an escape from the academic grind which our parents kept asking us about, while at the same time condoned by our parents because it was a healthy activity that could also help kids get into college and stay out of trouble. It was one of the few things that we really wanted to do for fun, and the rest of the community- from teachers to neighbors to parents to the local media- encouraged us in it. It was like I could be a rebel without really rebelling.

The next three years of high school, in sharp contrast, I lived in Ohio and was a middling #1 player/Captain for a horrendous team that almost never won. For three years I had nobody at my level to practice with each day, disinterested and mediocre coaches, and much worse weather to play in. I remember tennis in Missouri always being under sunny conditions, and the three seasons in Ohio were always cold, raining gray and windy. While partly true, my mind's eye probably exaggerates dramatically. I can hardly remember my 3 years as the undisputed leader of my high school team, even though I earned an individual winning record and various accolades. It wasn't that much fun because the team wasn't winning. Tennis was still a big part of my identity, but in a wounded sort of way. I got into other things. And nothing else since 9th grade has compared.

These experiences never really leave you. Winning never stopped being fun and addictive. I've never lost that unique combination of swagger and cockiness blended with a dose of humility and eagerness to pick things up that I don't know from other people. My desire to be liked by everyone and prove myself were reinforced by those days too. I've developed a strong liking for being around people who are a few years older than me, which has formed the base of my social circle for many years. And I've completely lost interest in being #1 for its own sake which is what most hip-hop stars seem to rap about these days. I like to think that power would not go to my head. I'd rather be part of a successful organization that kicks ass and does good stuff, rather than being at the top of it and achieving individual success while watching it fail. I wish Wall Street operated this way.

Funny enough, I'm not even in touch with anyone from that magical tennis spring of '94 these days. Maybe I'll hunt some of these folks down on the web. I'm quite sure that none of them would remember things the way that I do if they even remember the team (or me) at all- another of life's conundrums. To some of the better players, tennis was probably another chore.

Wikileaks: A Crossroads of Contradictions

With the recent document dump by the website Wikileaks.org, 25,000 State Department cables that had been previously classified were released into the public domain in one fell swoop. As with most controversial political issues of the day, pundits and public leaders around the world came out by the thousands to comment on this unprecedented event. The latest episode came on the heals of the previous big Wikileaks story: the release of thousands of secret documents regarding the conduct of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, including a military video of a tragic killing in an Iraqi neighborhood by American troops from an Apache helicopter. As with the embassy cables, the war diaries run the gamut from the mundane, which is mostly the case, to quite serious and disturbing. I recommend for all of you to read the fascinating New Yorker account of how this came to pass.

The Wikileaks exposures of sensitive government documents that were not meant for public consumption represent societal conundrums that are yet to be judged in either a court of law, or of public opinion. Is Wikileaks founder Julian Assange a hero, a whistle blower, a criminal, or a terrorist? Is he a force for good or evil? He has been called all of these things. And in an exceedingly rare case of a person entering the world stage in so dramatic and important a way, he cannot be pigeonholed as any one of these. This would be a gross and unjust oversimplification. For Mr. Assange, ladies and gentlemen, is all of these things at once- defying definitions and straining our moral assumptions.

Whatever the outcome of all this, and whatever your opinion of it might be, Wikileaks has helped alter the course of human history by catalyzing a form of rogue journalism that is impossible for governments to prevent or stop. For a change we have someone throwing caution to the wind instead of erring on the side of caution.

Technology has made it possible to run your website piecemeal on servers all over the world in countries with varying laws about censorship and cyber security. Once Wikileaks documents are published on the web, they cannot be easily taken down, and will never disappear from the public eye once documents have gone viral. The documents are already out there, and the backups of the backups have backups. Finances and operations are decentralized and run by shadowy members around the globe. What's been done can never be undone. This is the largest shift from how secrets were stolen before- a tape, a person, a room, a computer, a camera, or a notebook with sensitive information can be stolen or destroyed even if there are multiples. Document dumps onto the web cannot.

So what now? The future of the website or the copycat movement it will spawn are hard to fathom. We can only conjecture on what has already happened. It's time for the good, the bad, and the... highly entertaining.

No Page-Turner. After skimming the site and reading numerous accounts of the supposedly juiciest tidbits that Wikileaks has published, I was disappointed by the lack of truly interesting documents. Far from earth-shattering, most exposed documents describe routine matters and few surprises. So diplomats send cables about Libya's dictator traveling around with a "voluptuous blonde" nurse, or Putin likes to get drunk with Berlusconi? Less interesting than a single page of any Nelson DeMille novel. I was actually pleased to see that diplomats played hardball when trying to convince foreign countries to accept Guantanamo detainees- offering aid here and a meeting with Obama there. That's awesome- that's what they're supposed to be doing, it's what we pay them for! Reading any given cable to the extent it's worth it, is less a surprise than an affirmation that many at State were pushing US interests hard. Good.

Public Service?. Government agencies got a horrific wakeup call that was desperately needed- and of little surprise to most astute observers. For this reason, and the fact that little if anything truly dangerous leaked out yet, Americans should be highly grateful to Wikileaks. If the US Army or the State Department could allow disgruntled runts to simply waltz out of the office with thousands of sensitive documents capable of causing such an international stir, security measures are woefully lacking. There are far too many people with high-level clearances, too many sensitive documents floating around, and too little control of the flow of information we are told is so goddam critical to national security. If this stuff was so critical, it should have been guarded far more jealously. The current situation is unacceptable. President Obama should call an immediate review of US government agencies' information security practices. Governors and Mayors across the nation need to do the same. This isn't just for the Pentagon or State; other agencies one wouldn't usually expect to need worry about such as the Department of Agriculture, Social Security Administration, or the state DMV all harbor documents we wouldn't want in the wrong hands and certainly not out in public.

The Danger Zone. This brings us to why Wikileaks is potentially a big threat. It demonstrates how a small group of determined individuals seeking to perform chaos can probably manage to do some serious harm, using a small network of inside informants and tech savvy hackers in key places. They could release documents that could get people killed if terrorists or foreign governments got a hold of them. This in itself should worry us. Although there is something fair and even democratic in the end product being seen by website visitors- government documents in their original form for one to judge for himself or herself, something traditional journalism does not give us- Wikileaks self-selects what documents get released and when. The site decides on the sources to use, and they are not made public. However socially responsible their goals may be, and however noble a goal it is to investigate how taxpayer money is really being spent, it is dangerous to wield this power to decide who and what makes the cut. You cannot shine a light from a dark place over a long period of time. It carries the type of potential for abuse of power that Wikileaks is supposed to be against.

Should it be Shut? There is much talk of shutting down the site, arresting its principals, and making an example of them. Clearly a number of U.S. laws have been broken regarding release of classified information. However, Assange and most of his team are not U.S. citizens, and in fact many of them are not known. The information was leaked from the inside of government first, and in the case of State it's not clear which runt(s) were responsible. While the Wikileaks team could be considered accomplices to the initial crimes of stealing, the unique nature of what the website has done so far will never be stopped. In fact, imprisoning Assange could make him a sort of martyr, which could be exactly what he wants in order to accelerate the movement exponentially.

Spreading Democracy? Although the American media is largely missing this point, closed and corrupt governments such as those in China, Russia, North Korea, Burma, and Iran are much less concerned with what US diplomats are saying about them than what Wikileaks could say about them. In this sense, Wikileaks has done Western governments and people the most important service of all. Autocrats trying to keep things close to the vest are probably pretty worried right now.

At its best, Wikileaks could expose things to the global public that journalists, intelligence agencies, and law enforcement cannot or are unable to. It could even help bring down or alter regimes more easily than a superpower can. If it stays open, I hope Wikileaks does so. And if a byproduct of this is some more accountability at home, then so be it. Those who follow the rules generally have less to worry about.