My birthday was Saturday, meaning that I spent it at a debate tournament. Not as altogether bad as it sounds. I pretty much spend most of my time with the debate team anyways (more than twelve hours every Saturday, plus an extra, I dunno, four hours during the week). It must have been the birthday mojo or something, but I slept especially well on the bus and woke up feeling refreshed. For those of you who don't know, this is an unusual happening. We all (about thirty of us every week) clamber into our uncomfortable seats on the bus around five in the morning, give or take a half an hour, come rain, come sleet, come snow. Only some of us bring blankets, and the Freshmen haven't figured out what sleep means yet. Sometimes the bus doesn't have enough heat. Sometimes, like last week, it has way too much. Other times the bus driver is dangerous, or someone throws up, or... the list goes on and on. But I think you might understand my point. The debate bus, while a wonderful forced-bonding experience, isn't the most comfortable of places.
To those of you who have never experienced a debate tournament, this is how it goes (at least for us...):
Of course, as I explained above, we all get on the bus around five thirty, on average. After a half an hour of driving, we stop in Newport for Dunkin' Donuts. This is half because we need sustenance, and half because at this point, those who haven't written cases should start writing them. Just kidding, we really just need our caffeine. Add another two hours of driving, and we've arrived. By this time it's light out and most of us have woken up. We arrive at the school, and those of us who wear our pajamas on the bus scurry to a bathroom to change. It's usually about this time that I get a stomach ache. I don't know what it is, and I've tried everything, but I almost always get a stomach ache at debate tournaments. After this, there's a few things that could happen. If you're feeling diligent and motivated, you might work on your cases or go "talk to a wall" (Practice your speech by..well, talking to a wall). But more often than not, a group of us from our school and other schools will scavenge up a deck of cards and begin fierce games of President, ERS, or MAO. This goes on until postings. To be short, postings are just the printed pairings. As in, who are you going up against, in what room, what side you're arguing, etc. As soon as they go up, everyone hurries off to their rounds. It's something of a lather, rinse, repeat cycle from there. We usually have four rounds in a tournament, dispersed with cards, apples to apples, or attempting to *break the schematic. Somewhere in there is a longer break for lunch, and after the fourth round is a long period of waiting while Tabulation tallies up scores and determines placings. Awards usualy come in about an hour, sometimes not for an hour and a half, depending on the complications of the tournament. After awards, we change back into bus clothes and board back on for a long ride home, broken up by an hour stop for dinner at a sandwich shop or Whole Foods.
All in all, it's a good day, if a long one. My team's day is a bit different and a bit longer than others, because we're one of the northern-most teams. Other teams only have to travel a half an hour to most tournaments, if that.
We tend to do pretty well- we're currently the leading school in our state, but we're closely followed by Cape Elizabeth. They do speech. Lots of it.
We swept on Saturday, claiming first in Congressional, a second in Public forum, and a first in Lincoln Douglas (that was me! I still blame birthday mojo).
*Breaking the Schematic is a term for when a student (or someone else) takes the postings, and off of a few base conjectures, figures out the results of the matches and the scores of everyone involved. It's addicting, and highly logical.
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