My Debate Trip to California Part 4
Judging for the National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence seemed like a good idea, but it ruined my ever-so-delicate self-esteem (which is different than my ego. Nothing could dampen my ego.)
First, I have to look up the terms so I don’t look like an idiot answering a Judge’s Preference form. Second, I failed miserably and the debaters recognized how big of an idiot I am. And finally, I watched the rounds and realize just how ill-equipped I was at Parli. (The rest of this story will be very boring to people who never did debate. I’d suggest skipping it. But as a consolation…here’s a picture of a Cameron!!)
Parli in the south is relatively slow and non-policy oriented. But at NPTE, they are only one step removed from full-on policy debate (Like CX in high school, but without the evidence.) They talk incredibly fast, have multiple arguments, use very technical jargon, and rarely ever debate the actual resolution. There are so many kriticks, Counter-Plans, topicality arguments, and links to nuclear war that the original resolution of “The EU should invade the Gaza strip” literally never gets brought up. The finals round degraded into a giant procedural argument about the nature of Parli itself, and whether pretending we can enact actual policies is good, or whether it’s better to recognize the event as a giant role-playing exercise with no immediate impact on the world around us. I didn’t even know you could do that.
Aristotle mentioned something about “Being smart enough to know how much I don’t know,” and usually I’m in that boat. When I try to figure out sports statistics, and find out I’m incredibly wrong, it’s no skin off my back. I don’t pretend to know anything about sports, so I’m not offended when I’m wrong.
But debate…I really thought I knew debate. When answering the question “Who am I,” I define myself as three things. 1)An engineer, 2)A generous lover, and 3)A debater. So to learn that I was completely wrong about what a debate could be was a real kick in the balls.
Tomorrow: Enough about the quiet, pillow-smothering death of my confidence in my debater skills. I’ll talk about how I actually had a really good time. Seriously, I had a great time.
First, I have to look up the terms so I don’t look like an idiot answering a Judge’s Preference form. Second, I failed miserably and the debaters recognized how big of an idiot I am. And finally, I watched the rounds and realize just how ill-equipped I was at Parli. (The rest of this story will be very boring to people who never did debate. I’d suggest skipping it. But as a consolation…here’s a picture of a Cameron!!)
Parli in the south is relatively slow and non-policy oriented. But at NPTE, they are only one step removed from full-on policy debate (Like CX in high school, but without the evidence.) They talk incredibly fast, have multiple arguments, use very technical jargon, and rarely ever debate the actual resolution. There are so many kriticks, Counter-Plans, topicality arguments, and links to nuclear war that the original resolution of “The EU should invade the Gaza strip” literally never gets brought up. The finals round degraded into a giant procedural argument about the nature of Parli itself, and whether pretending we can enact actual policies is good, or whether it’s better to recognize the event as a giant role-playing exercise with no immediate impact on the world around us. I didn’t even know you could do that.
Aristotle mentioned something about “Being smart enough to know how much I don’t know,” and usually I’m in that boat. When I try to figure out sports statistics, and find out I’m incredibly wrong, it’s no skin off my back. I don’t pretend to know anything about sports, so I’m not offended when I’m wrong.
But debate…I really thought I knew debate. When answering the question “Who am I,” I define myself as three things. 1)An engineer, 2)A generous lover, and 3)A debater. So to learn that I was completely wrong about what a debate could be was a real kick in the balls.
Tomorrow: Enough about the quiet, pillow-smothering death of my confidence in my debater skills. I’ll talk about how I actually had a really good time. Seriously, I had a great time.