Talking of Michelangelo

Or… "Grand Hotel. Always the same. People come, people go, nothing ever happens."

This is the time of year when one wonders what the new crop will be like. Will we get a lot of newbies in the incoming crop of freshmen or late starting Sophomores: second year always yields the odd rutabaga who for some reason missed year one but feels that he or she is now ready to season up the old c.v. before the colleges come a-callin’ (and there may be the odd cabbage who heard that the Caveman lecture may be happening some month soon, and doesn’t want to miss the part where Frank Gehry goes all-in with two deuces). But usually it’s mostly freshmen, and for that matter, usually it’s freshmen who are of the future Speecho-American persuasion. I’ve never understood the attraction of speech over debate, but I would say that with the Sailors, at least the opening ratio is about two to one. I think there may be some myth out there that speech is easier than debate, which is like saying that English is easier than Mathematics. They’re both equally complex, but they’re wildly different, with different attractions for different types of people. There are some tangential areas of course, like Congress with a splash of LD and a twist of PF, but the Sailors don’t tend to be of the mixed forensics drink variety. There is a wall of separation between speech and debate which is unfortunate, but unless I were coaching both, I can’t see how I’d be able to knock it down. There’s only so many hours in the day, as the saying goes.

Anyhow, one must add to that the drop-off rate (hence the Eliot and the Grand Hotel). Not only do we get new people in September, but we also lose a few old ones. And I’m not talking about graduates here (I miss Emcee and Hush already), but simply people who don’t come back for another year. As a general rule, those who don’t come back don’t come back in their third year. One can get through two years pretty easily, and do fairly well, if one sets one’s sights on success in the novice and intermediate levels. A natural bent for fast thinking will usually win some tin for you for the first year or two. But the varsity level, which will in fact only harder insofar as it is the next step up, is, I think, wrongly perceived by many younger debaters as, well, just too much. It’s seen as a commitment to selling the old soul and working one’s heart out, or else, if you’re not willing to sell your soul to it, a commitment to getting your head handed to you week after week. Now yes, you do have to do work at a harder level, but again, for your everyday debater it’s no different from school work being a little harder with each ensuing year. Unless, of course, you are personally dedicated to being a national $ircuit debater, which is indeed a level of commitment way above the norm. That requires doing a lot of extra work, and traveling week in and week out, and it’s about the same as, do you want to be on, say, the golf team or do you think of yourself as the next Tiger Woods. The former requires a little time on the driving range; the latter requires you build a hut on the driving range and move in for the next ten years. One of the reasons I push second-year folk into doing as much varsity competition as they can is for them to test these waters, not only to improve themselves but to understand what really happens when it’s all varsity all the time. I don’t like the idea of people being scared off by work. And if you understand it’s not all that much work, unless you’re going for Tigerwooddom, then you’re in good shape to make the decision whether or not to stick with the activity.

Of course, people move away for other reasons too, including it just not being the right activity for them, or although I do try to urge these people to consider a touch of speech before fading away into that good night, I can understand the situation. Forensics is broad but it’s not universal. Then there’s the people who get sort of buried in regular work. To them I always remind them that the door to the team never closes; just because you move away this year doesn’t mean you won’t be accepted back next year with open arms. For that matter, one can always dabble for a while (e.g., do a couple of PFs just to keep the old hand in) while other matters are at hand. I think that sometimes people are too categorical in their understanding of the team. Come and go as you please. That’s fine by me. I want folks to get whatever benefits it makes sense for them to get. I’m not breeding $ircuit debaters in the Sailor incubator, I’m simply doing my best to introduce folks to ideas they may not find elsewhere. If I’ve said it once I’ve said it 324,728 times: I don’t care how people do competitively (except insofar as I want everyone to do well because I like them, and I want their work to be rewarded). So the team does have an open door. When someone resigns from the team (as compared to just evanescing), I tell them that. They’re welcome back whenever. This isn’t the Mafia, you know.

So I wonder who won’t come back next year. People come, people go. I know that Horaceman, TSWAS, will be moving on (actually for none of the reasons cited above), and I’ve heard a few other rumblings hither and thither. I do hope that people who are just a little fearful of getting too far in over their heads do talk to me about it, so I can tell them what I’ve written here. I’ve only once tried to talk someone out of quitting the team, when I felt there was a misunderstanding between that person and myself, and I felt a need to explain that what this person might have thought was not the case. Otherwise, I truly believe that high school is a great time to try different things. Try this one, then try that one. Expose yourself to different ideas and different people. Try different activities. If not now, when?

(In the room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo – I’ve got poetry on the brain from reading Break, Blow, Burn. I stopped reading Words and Rules. Pinker may be God, but this book was really inside baseball: if you realllllyyyy like linguistics, it’s right up your alley, but it wasn’t about grand ideas, it was about specific linguistic mechanisms, and after a while I just got tired of it. One of the great joys of not going to school: if you don’t like a book, you can stop reading it.)