The Student of the Game

They say that in order to be the Master, you must be a very good student.

I see Rafa as an excellent student of the game. It could be chess or any game that requires a good deal of strategy, like football. He knows that he has to study hard in order to master it. And he would like his partners in the game, the players in the team, to be like him. To be excellent students, meticulous, analytical, rigorous, and above all, determined.

The most important of all is the quality to never give up learning the game. If we look at the Liverpool Football Team, we find many potentially excellent students. And it does not depend on age. In fact, Hyppia is probably learning many new things, when Rafa came in to ask him to be a "student", rather than just the usual things that he did before. It was probably more difficult for players already set in their ways to start learning to be a "student". They probably say, "WTF! This is hard work!" They probably think that they are good enough already. So, Rafa showed them the door, because he cannot afford to let those who do not want to learn stay in team. It would go against the spirit of learning, the main philosophy of being a student.

He gave them chances. Baros, Le Tallec, Diao...and some others. But they wanted to either do things their way and not learn, or they were not willing to learn.

Alonso... is you can say, a "born student of the game". You can imagine, his mind ticking away even as he was a kid, imagining how best to do something. Always to be better than before. And now we can see Sinama Pongolle, as a potentially excellent student who had improved leaps and bounds since Rafa came in with this philosophy and way of learning. Much of it is down to method, but only the student can control his temperament. He has to learn to feel the pulse and read the nature of the game. He needs to be a student with an acute instinct, awareness and sense of execution.

Only an excellent Student like Rafa, could be a Master of the Game, and the most important thing to learn is that, you will always need to be a student, and other people are the ones that calls you a Master.

The Student of the Game, that is what I should strive to be. Not just any student, but "The Student". There is a difference.

And what game are we playing? It is 'any' game actually. You find a 'field', and that could be the 'department' where I work, which is part of the faculty and part of the university. It could be a levelled playing field or an uneven level or any sort of conditions when you start playing the game. When you realised that you are in a game, the truth is that you are already in it as a player, but you may have not realised it as a student yet. But you need to be "The Student". At the moment, I am absent from that game in my department.

The game that I am playing now is the "PhD Game", and in this game, I am competing against myself. Someone evaluates me at the end, but winning it depends entirely up to me. In the beginning and middle stages of the game, the supervisor has a part in it, but if the supervisor had a negative influence or performed poorly, it may delay you winning the game. But mostly it is up to you.

You put up the timeframe of winning the game. And your mentality will fail or help you to win. Almost 99 percent is up to you.

The Student studies the game avidly, studiously and meticulously. The Student must be aware, and try to reason out and be aggressive when there are setbacks happening especially. Always on the toes, the Student must know when to kill off the opponent, what remedies to apply, and can feel the pulse and rythmm of the game... instinctively!

PhD's the game, so what type of student must I be? I have to be a very good writer and composer of my thesis, as well as presenter. That type.

You can be asleep for a long time before realising that you are in a game. The idea is to wake up, just in time, to take control of the game. Once you are steering your destiny's wheels, it is a matter of time, before you can drive it home safely.