New narratives

High school is a collection of intersecting sagas. Every year a new set of these sagas begins with the arrival of that year’s freshmen. From their perspective, this is their story, their saga. Each is the star of his or her own ongoing epic. High school will take up four years of that epic, about a quarter of their life so far. That’s a big deal.

A high school debate team has its own narrative. Each year the team passes out a group of graduates, who one way or the other have left their collective and individual marks on the team, and each year the team takes in a new group of students who will make their own mark. The tenor of the team changes with each passage. It’s like families. The firstborn arrives into one family, the secondborn into another family, the third into another family, etc. (unless there’s a decent amount of birth control, which doesn’t really apply to debate teams, as in, it’s too late now, we’re stuck with them). Forensics, with its four-year lifespan, has to be fairly close to unique among high school activities, insofar as the team working together as a team is concerned. I mean, how much do the novice football players interact with the varsity team?

I love the change that comes with the new year. I love the passing of one group and the arrival of a new group, and I love watching how the change affects the dynamic of the team. Needless to say, the individuals on the team, as they move from year to year, change a bit themselves. (I hope, if you’re an adolescent reading this, that this does not come as a surprise, but adolescence is, with any luck, transitory.) I like to watch where leadership arises, where friendships take place, where brains start to spill over, where people who used to say little are suddenly willing to opine at length. I like changing myself, as the team changes. To some extent they have to adjust to me (poor dears) but I also have to adjust to them (poor me). And since they’re different every year, I have to adjust every year. In other words, there’s also my saga, intersecting with everyone else’s, except mine is the longest in chronology, if not necessarily in intensity. That is, I would suggest, probably without much demurral from the VCA, that being a high school kid is a lot more intense than being an old fart coach. But still, I’m there, and as a spectator of my own narrative, I do get a kick out of it.

We brought on the newbies last night. The numbers seemed reasonable, about half a dozen or so each of debaters and Speecho-Americans. There could be some more lurkers, and we’ll try to shake them out of the bushes for next week. I like the idea of adding 5 or 6 new people to the team a year. Very manageable. O’C probably adds 5 or 6 hundred: that’s scary. I like to learn their names by the time they’re seniors. O’C will still be trying to learn their names at his retirement party. Anyhow, my guess is that one or two will evanesce by next week, but the 4 or 5 remaining will be the goods.

After an abbreviated introduction to forensics, rendered abbreviatable by the manageable numbers, we spun off to our own room and talked meaningless nonsense about what we do for a while, then hit straight into Sept-Oct. This is a great topic for novices, because there’s nothing about it that’s hard to understand, at least on face. They’re not prepared for meaningful analyses of just societies, I would expect, but they sure as hell know and have thoughts about the death penalty. For those who are interested, a simple poll of Sailordom on the subject of Old Sparky split pro and con about 50/50, which I thought was pretty surprising. I would have expected more cons. Whatever.

As I say, every year we get to change, and I’ve decided to rearrange my curriculum and go straight next week into social contract theory. Hitherto I’ve gone on about debate structure, but the former seems more interesting, and more likely to keep people in their seats for the duration. Either way, though, it begins some separate novice sessions, which means extra chezzes for the other ABs, which means an awful lot of debate for a while for moi. The first couple of months are like that, what with newbies and new parents and Bump and whathaveyou. Apres Bump, le snooze. I can’t wait.