|Peter Boettke|
I have been very fortunate in the formal teachers I was exposed to in undergraduate and graduate school --- great economic teachers, such as Hans Sennholz, James Buchanan, Kenneth Boulding, and Don Lavoie taught me many things that have stayed with me throughout my career as an economist and teacher of economics. And I also was exposed to great teachers in philosophy, law, political science, and history throughout my formal education.
But I think we academics tend to underestimate what we learn in arenas other than the classroom. My father taught me many of the most important lessons I ever learned about work-ethic, workmanship, and pride in a job well done. But outside of my father, the most important lessons I learned were from the men who coached me at various points in my athletic career in HS and college. One of those individuals was inducted into the basketball Hall of Fame last week --- Herb Magee. He taught me how shoot a basketball the proper way when I was in middle school, and throughout HS I always looked forward to his clinic at Lehigh Valley Basketball Camp on shooting every summer. When I became a counselor at Lehigh Valley Basketball Camp, I got the opportunity to work alongside Coach Magee when he ran his shooting clinic. Later in life when I was coaching MS and then HS as well as AAU kids, I tried to get all of them to learn from Coach Magee's about how to shoot a basketball the correct way.
"It is just a matter of practice," Coach Magee would say, but he quickly stressed that "practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect." He also stressed that practice is where you earned the right to be disappointed with performance -- as he said, if he missed a putt playing golf or sliced a ball, he didn't get mad because he hadn't put in the practice; but if he missed a free throw, then he had the right to be upset because he knew that he had taken 1000 shots a day. At least that is what I remember him telling me, and that message stuck with me not only with basketball and later tennis, but also in my chosen endeavor of economic research and college teaching. Translating the lessons learned in one endeavor to another, is something I have always sought to do as I matured. I also bought seriously the idea that you learn more from your failures than you do from whatever successes you might have --- don't fear failure; hate failure and learn from it, but never fear it -- instead face it bluntly and honestly and strive to improve so you will not fail the next time.
At Lehigh Valley, I also had Coach Jack Bruen as my coach several years running. Coach Bruen had an amazing career playing and coaching at Catholic University and also at Colgate University. Coach Bruen was an inspiring figure and he was very nice to me --- he always thought I could be a much better player than I was able to achieve and pushed me to do that, and despite his own busy schedule coaching he periodically reached out to me throughout my HS career to give me words of encouragement, etc. During my senior year of HS he sent me tickets so I could see DeMatha (where he coached at the time) play Power Memorial in a holiday tournament. Both Coach Magee and Coach Bruen instilled in me not only a life-long love of the game, but a passion for the science and coaching of the game that still exists to this day.
My life lessons came from my dad and from the different coaches I was exposed during my formative years (I will not lie, I had several bad coaches as well, but I was fortunate to have really great coaches as well*). I thank these men for helping me negotiate the turbulent times associated with growing up, and for stressing the virtues of hard work, honest self-assessment, and the desire for self-improvement (rather than self-satisfaction).
I am sure that many others have had a similar experience, though perhaps in areas outside of athletics --- such as a music teacher outside of school, or a boss that you worked for, or simply a neighbor or family member who served as a mentor. Formal school has an important role to play I would say in getting an education, but many of our best "educational" experiences are probably outside the confines of school.
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*My college tennis coach -- Joe Walters -- is still coaching at GCC and has amassed an amazing record of 21 conference championships and over 300 match wins.
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