Competition

Of late, because I am considering hanging out my own shingle as a sole practitioner and I have to get better accustomed to the notion of self-promotion, I have taken for the first time ever to wearing something with my alma mater's name on it.  OK, not even that, just the letter "Y", along with "1988" or something like that and then "25th Reunion" on the back.  I have always shied away from that kinda stuff, including bumper stickers, though I have defaulted to an alumni email address because I want to be prepared to switch from Yahoo mail at the drop of a hat if it keeps degenerating and because the "yale.edu" has looked good during spates of job searching.  Not that I am necessarily shy to discussing where I went to college, or even where I got my PhD.  I am both proud of it and insecure enough that I lean on that shit sometimes when I feel threatened.

It's been interesting to see the response to my new hat.  At a neighborhood association meeting, this CEO guy who moved down from Larchmont not long ago and is in the middle of the most epic multi-million dollar teardown rebuild cycle in world history, this guy looks at my hat and says something like "I'm sorry." And when asked it turns out he went to Princeton, and then quickly I learn that he spent time at McKinsey.  So, desired effect had, in that case. He now regards me as kind of a peer.

So this morning I ran into a guy from my high school down at the coffee bar at the local grocery store.  A high-powered guy, works for a big law firm in DC, ran for elective state-wide elective office here in NC and almost made it.  Went to law school at Yale himself.  Good guy.  He'd been for a run.  We're chatting and he says to me "I just went for a 5-mile run."  I moved on to catch up with my family, and it occurs to me "why do I care how many miles he ran?  what moved him to inform me of that?"  And I thinks it because that guys like us are just competitive, and whatever we may achieve we're always half-trying to one up the other.

Was my hat setting the tone for the encounter?