21
Belonging Without Competing
I
ncreasingly competition turns
me into a man I do not like.
Feeling inferior, stretched,
incompetent (not good at
competitions) turns me into a
person who is hard to live with. Most
of the time this unpleasant, angry
and jealous person remains hidden
behind the mask of pleasantries I
have used to deal with what Carl
Jung called our “shadow side.” As a
self-acknowledged nice man, I work
hard to make people happy, smooth
over waves and always, always show
deference to whatever person I am
working with, like Carson (Head
Butler from the PBS series, “Downton
Abbey”) to the Earl of Grantham,
Robert Crawley. This was the persona
that helped me survive childhood in
the Midwest.
my students’ work to bring home the
hardware, in spite of all of the odds
they face. If they are doing it for me
in the guise of doing it for my program that is even worse. I want my
students to feel appreciated, loved
and respected without competing.
I would love the same thing for my
program.I want to find a way to join
my wonderful, hard working, family
of advisers in this state and in the
nation and leave Thomas at home in
the Abbey, or better yet invite him upstairs into the abbey proper and help
to make everyone equal in the best of
American traditions.
But when my Mr. Carson gets
stressed, tired or feels unappreciated
then my shadow self, my own Thomas
Barrow (Butler) comes slipping out
sideways. This bitter, complaining,
and never happy servant, who works
so very, very hard to please others but
never quite succeeds or gets to the
top, to the golden crown of achievement he so desperately wants, then
becomes devious, conniving and
downright mean at times.
The crux of the matter, the heart of
the struggle, is it is literally impossible
for me to imagine what a convention
or conference gathering would look
like without any competition at all.
After a brief web search I could not
find one instance of a gathering for
high school students that was not
linked to a competition of sorts.
Makes sense, high school is all about
measuring,
One of the
evaluating, and check-in tables at
the Washington
classification
Journalism
right? Well that Education
Association
was the old
conference held at
Auburn High
model.
While I have not fallen to the depths
of depravity of my namesake working
in bowels of Downton Abbey, nor
succumbed to the dark side of the
force, nevertheless I do not like the
man that I become when involved in
competitions.
I do not like how desperately hard
I have tried for
three weeks
now to come
up with a
different model
and cannot.
But I would
love to have a
School was
carefully watched
by none other than
Queen Elizabeth.
Thomas Kaup,
Auburn’s adviser
uses cardboard
cutouts to draw
attention to
journalism events.
(photo by Jordan
Layacan, Photo
Editor Auburn
Trojan Journalism)
conversation with those who would
like to look for something different.
Something to do, perhaps, in a ddition
to competitions, or in lieu of them,
that would be an honorable, noteworthy and valuable non-competitive
time with other journalism students
and advisers from around the country
Thomas Kaup recently completed his
30th year of teaching at Auburn High
School, Auburn, Washington. Kaup
has advised and taught in Nebraska,
Iowa and Washington. Kaup is the
co-author of Middle School Journalism,
a textbook published by TeachingPoint.net. Kaup founded the Magnet
journalism program at Alice Buffett
Magnet Middle School in Omaha,
Nebraska. Kaup was selected as the
Washington Journalism Adviser of the
Year in 2014 and has written articles for
Herff Jones and Walsworth yearbook
magazines. Kaup advises Trojan
Journalism at Auburn High School,
which produces the Troy InVoice and
Invader yearbook.