I got sucked into the Olympics today, although in fairness for an hour I was flipping between reruns of The Office on TBS (which included some of my favorite bizarre Dwight behavior from the series, as he decides to inspect the CFO‘s house during a cocktail party rather than mingle with the guests).

Maybe I’m just getting old and/or acquiring some rudimentary paternal instincts, but I wonder whether all that individual pressure—I’m thinking in particular of the gymnastics contests, which seem to attract the youngest competitors—is really good for teenage kids. I’m all for putting tough challenges out there for young people to meet (if I wasn’t, I’d probably not be much of a college professor), but the idea of dealing with the potential of being the best X in the world at 15 or 16 just seems a bit too daunting. Then again, maybe it’s better to go into those things with a touch of naïveté, not really knowing just how monumentally “big” the challenge of being the best is.