World Cup Fever
2010年06月14日
When I moved to Japan 10 years ago, I had almost zero interest in soccer (as we call football in the US). I was (and still am) a baseball man, through and through. I love the LA Dodgers and in Japan I adopted the Hanshin Tigers as my favorite team in my adopted home. But, over the years, I have come to be quite impressed by the amazing displays of athleticism and artistry of the “beautiful game.” Now, I consider myself an honest to goodness fan of the game. At the club level, I support three teams: LA Galaxy, FC Yokohama, and Bolton Wanders. The first two are my home town clubs, while Bolton is an English Premiere League club famous for “punching above its weight,” which I can associate with since that is exactly what I help my clients do.
Now, with World Cup season upon us, I find myself waking up at odd hours (3:30am) to watch live matches broadcast from South Africa. Despite the constantly blaring vuvuzela, I have enjoyed the matches so far. I was especially happy to see the scrappy US earn a point in a lively 1-1 draw with England. It was great to see American soccer players competing as equals with some of the world’s greatest players. And, I was pleasantly surprised to see Japan win its opener 1-0 against Cameroon. Team Japan played solid defense and took advantage of its one great scoring opportunity. This result was especially shocking since Japan had played so horribly coming into the match: they couldn’t even score a goal in a friendly with a jet lagged Zimbabwe team (ranked 110th by FIFA) in their final tune-up match. But it just goes to show that with hard work and persistence anything can happen.
It is the same thing I tell my clients; you never know what will happen if you don’t give it your best shot. Almost every year one or more of my clients gets into a school despite having a GMAT or TOEFL score well outside of the 80% range. For instance, in years past, I have seen clients get into Stanford with a 640 GMAT and Chicago with a 590. And this year, one of my clients (let’s call him Taro) was accepted to a top 5 US school with a low 600 GMAT score. In a future blog, I will describe the process that led to this client’s success. But for now, I need to get ready for the upcoming New Zealand vs. Slovakia match.