{"id":2133,"date":"2019-10-18T21:17:20","date_gmt":"2019-10-18T21:17:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/?p=2133"},"modified":"2020-03-28T21:56:17","modified_gmt":"2020-03-28T21:56:17","slug":"merit-diplomacy-and-pingrys-economy-of-accolades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/2019\/10\/18\/merit-diplomacy-and-pingrys-economy-of-accolades\/","title":{"rendered":"Merit Diplomacy and Pingry\u2019s Economy of Accolades"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Noah Bergam (V)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the spring of last year, some friends and I became obsessed with an online game called Diplomacy. In this wonderfully irritating game, each player owns a certain pre-WWI European country, and, move by move, they try to maximize their territory. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since each player starts out with roughly the same resources, the only way to succeed is to make alliances, to get people to trust you, and, of course, to silently betray that trust at some point to reach the top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was perhaps the first time I was introduced to the concept of a zero-sum game\u2013\u2013a system where, in order to gain, someone else must lose. I was terrible at it. I didn\u2019t have the confidence to really scare anyone. I couldn\u2019t keep a secret for my life. And worst of all, I couldn\u2019t get anyone to trust me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u2018game\u2019 I was most familiar with up to that point was that of school, of direct merit. A system where hard work and quality results are supposed to pay off on an individual basis, and one person\u2019s success doesn\u2019t have to mean another\u2019s failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was especially entrenched in that mindset when my brother went to Pingry. I looked up to his leadership and social abilities, his diplomacy essentially, and realized I could never be like him in that realm\u2013\u2013I didn\u2019t have the same sort of outward confidence and social cunning. All I could do was look at his numbers and try my best to one-up them; in my mind, that was the only way for me to prove I wasn\u2019t inferior. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But now that brotherly competition is gone. And I have the leadership I\u2019ve been working toward. And now I\u2019m realizing that, from my current perspective, Pingry\u2019s system of student leadership is not the game of direct merit I thought it was. I wouldn\u2019t go so far to say it\u2019s a bloodbath, zero sum-game, but there\u2019s certainly an element of transaction, and therefore diplomacy, you have to master. Complex transactions of time and energy for club tenure and awards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s really an economy of accolades, where the currency is our effort as students outside the classroom. We involve ourselves in activities and invest our time, of course, to do things we love, but there\u2019s no denying that there\u2019s an incentive to earn a title, a position of leadership that can be translated onto a resum\u00e9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s an ugly mindset, but it unfortunately exists. And the ruling principle is merit diplomacy\u2013\u2013for the underclassmen, a more merit-oriented rise through application processes and appointments, and for upperclassmen leaders, a need to balance the prerogatives and talents of constituent club members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That diplomatic end for the student leader is taxing. You have to think in terms of your own defense when people doubt your abilities. You need to make sure people still invest time in what you run. You want respect. Friendship. But sometimes you can\u2019t shake off the guilt of getting that position, because you know the anxious feeling of watching and waiting for that reward. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now your mistakes are visible. Now you have to know why you have the position you have, and why others should follow you. You need legitimacy to hold on to what you have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m the first junior editor-in-chief of this paper in recent memory. And I know that raises eyebrows to my counterparts who know my brother was editor-in-chief last year. I acknowledge that publicly, because I\u2019m putting the integrity and openness of my job here above my own personal fear of being seen as some privileged sequel. I\u2019m not going to let whispers define my work. I know who I am, and it\u2019s more than just this title. It\u2019s more than a well-spent investment in the economy of accolades. And I\u2019ll prove it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s what the diplomacy side of things teaches you. You come to a watershed moment in high school where you pass the illusion of the merit machine and realize it\u2019s all a matter of communication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Merit diplomacy can be an ugly and nerve wracking concept; it\u2019s damaging to take it so seriously. It distracts from true passion, and it reinforces the bubble of Pingry life, making us deify our in-school positions and the idea of the accolade rather than the identity of the students themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are communities and worlds beyond this school. And one might think of Pingry\u2019s economy of accolades as the microcosm of the \u2018real world.\u2019 But I think even that gives it too much credit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s practice. It should be a side thought to our passions, not the intense focus of student life. Merit diplomacy is a game\u2013\u2013perhaps a high-stakes game\u2013\u2013but a game nonetheless.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Noah Bergam (V) In the spring of last year, some friends and I became obsessed with an online game called Diplomacy. In this wonderfully irritating game, each player owns a certain pre-WWI European country, and, move by move, they try to maximize their territory.  Since each player starts out with roughly the same resources, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[65,205,11],"tags":[14,12,13],"class_list":["post-2133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial","category-noah","category-opinion","tag-editorial","tag-op-ed","tag-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2133"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2161,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2133\/revisions\/2161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}