Moving Forward by Moving Together

How do you find motivation?

How do you maintain the will to go on?

How do you keep going, when everything around you seems determined to make you stop?

My guess is…you don’t go alone. 

When I was in school, some of my AP classes (Physics, I’m looking at you) just seemed impossible to beat. But on Thursdays, I knew I’d get a much-needed break from them at Quiz Bowl practice.

Sure, Quiz Bowl was also an academic challenge (that required study before and during practice), but this was a team effort, a game. I didn’t feel so defeated when I knew I could rely on my teammates. Maybe someone else would handle the math or history questions while I answered the literature and world religions questions. (It was also a relief to play something I already had years of experience in, since I’d been in Quiz Bowl since the fourth grade.) 

After each match, we’d laugh at our mistakes and joke about whatever was on our minds. And knowing that we’d do it all over again next Thursday kept me going through the next week.

Today, I don’t have Quiz Bowl to motivate me, but I’ve made new friends online (mostly on Discord). My online friends share most of my interests, so it’s easy to have fun with them. I talk about my struggles with them, and I listen to theirs. We tell each other stories of our childhoods and share pictures of what outside looks like for us (yes, we do go outside, haha). Some of us are from entirely different countries, so sometimes we talk about food, clothes, or even interesting language differences we may have.  

Whenever work gets intense or life gets harder than AP Physics, I remember to apply the lesson I learned from Quiz Bowl: having friends to lean on can make motivation a little easier.