Too quiet.
There is this lacuna between the shutting down of registration and the shutting down of ranking, where there isn’t much to do aside from wondering if you’re using the word lacuna correctly, this being the very first time and all. Everything is working on tabroom.com, and I’ve checked it to see if it’s registering the strikes, and it is, and there isn’t much else for it until 9:00 tonight when I can port everything over to TRPC and get it running. I’ve got the chez to myself tonight, so I’ll get everything packed up. I’ve got trophies left from last year, WWMD tee shirts, reams of paper, mugs (probably the last year for these suckers), oxygen tanks, hazmat suits, rubber duckies, boxes of iCrappies (formerly crappy prizes), the Jon Cruz Award, etc., all waiting to be organized. That’ll kill a minute or two. I haven’t gotten many changes after the deadline, hence not many fines; presumably the real action will be on Friday at the table, where the money goes directly to Grameen. I’ve passed along the housing list and warned everyone that if they’re allergic to horny toads, now is the time to tell us before they get lodged at the House o’ Horny Toads or its equivalent. I’ve still got speaker point parameters to publish, and I’ll get them out at some point, probably by the time you read this, especially if you wait to read this for a month or two.
Otherwise, it’s business as usual. We Sailored last night, going over ballots from Montwegia for a while, for a start. There really is nothing like a ballot to find things to work on with Plebes. Even if you find the ballot incomprensibly weird, there’s probably something useful on it. I argued with the Panivore a bit (there’s a new one for you), this time on who the worst judges are. I always maintain that it’s high school students, who may believe too much in their own interpretation of resolutions and whatnot. This is not to say all high school students are bad—far from it—but there’s more bad ones of these than anything else. I posit that parent judges are better because they have learned orthodoxy (especially if they’ve come through our MHL/CFL training) and don’t have any horses in the race themselves. I’m not saying that you have to be a good high school debater to be a good judge, but you do have to be a good judge to be a good judge, if you don’t mind my putting it that way. Anyhow, no debate meeting is complete without a debate with the Panivore, so nothing new there. Anyhow, she also regaled us with tales of Minneapolis and what
Seriously, I don’t know what I’m going to do next year without these two. They’re doing most of my job for me, and probably better. [Sigh.]
1 comment:
the ability to flow is high on our list of priorities in judging. typically high school students are better at this than parents.
for my novices i find that parent judges actually dishearten them and don't provide anything relevant. it's important that the person in the back of the room looks like/sound like they know what's going on and cares. parents rarely have this effect. one of my students looked at me with despair recently and asked "why am i debating if they don't even know what's going on?" I remain without a good answer to this question beyond "so we can move you out of novice and put you in front of judges who know what they're doing." high school students are typically myopic and foolish and don't take things seriously enough, but i'll take any of that over the obstinate aged and only recently introduced to the activity. parents with experience competing/coaching are another matter entirely.
a bad decision from a high school student i can live with, a ballot that repeatedly comments on totally irrelevant or minor aspects of the debate as the most important ones i cannot.
also jim, i find that parents make the most assumptive and personal decisions. students often have the nihilism of a competitor and don't favor any arguments.
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