Frustrations

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Buzzersout4harambe
Kimahri
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Frustrations

Post by Buzzersout4harambe »

I'm really frustrated because our team is really good, but we always finish second to one of the best teams in our state. This season we finished second in conference, second at a local tournament in December, second in sectionals last year, second in history bowl, and now we will not have the opportunity to win regionals because we have been put in a bracket with them. We have a good team but never get any recognition for anything because they run the area. Can anyone relate to this? We will be at nationals in December but other than that I feel like we have literally nothing going for us and I have just been wasting my time with scholastic bowl.

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A Dim-Witted Saboteur
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Re: Frustrations

Post by A Dim-Witted Saboteur »

Buzzersout4harambe wrote:I'm really frustrated because our team is really good, but we always finish second to one of the best teams in our state. This season we finished second in conference, second at a local tournament in December, second in sectionals last year, second in history bowl, and now we will not have the opportunity to win regionals because we have been put in a bracket with them. We have a good team but never get any recognition for anything because they run the area. Can anyone relate to this? We will be at nationals in December but other than that I feel like we have literally nothing going for us and I have just been wasting my time with scholastic bowl.

User was reminded to enable a signature. --Mgmt.
My team always gets put in the same sectional as IMSA, which for some reason we always lose to, so it's fair to say I know this feeling. It sucks, but trust me, as long as you've learned anything, made one new friend, or had one good experience with your teammates, you haven't wasted anything. Even if your team doesn't win anything in High School, there's always College. Take heart, patch yourself up, get better, and enjoy the fact that you're playing on a "really good" team.
Jakob M. (they/them)
Michigan State '21, Indiana '2?
"No one has ever organized a greater effort to get people interested in pretending to play quiz bowl"
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The Stately Rhododendron
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Re: Frustrations

Post by The Stately Rhododendron »

Buzzersout4harambe wrote:I'm really frustrated because our team is really good, but we always finish second to one of the best teams in our state. This season we finished second in conference, second at a local tournament in December, second in sectionals last year, second in history bowl, and now we will not have the opportunity to win regionals because we have been put in a bracket with them. We have a good team but never get any recognition for anything because they run the area. Can anyone relate to this? We will be at nationals in December but other than that I feel like we have literally nothing going for us and I have just been wasting my time with scholastic bowl.
My number 1 piece of advice for people thinking like you do: "Fill your cup and it will overflow"

I don't know how many of you high schoolers know this, but back in my high school days, my team was known as "the most unpredictable team in quizbowl." We would go on wild swings, playing terribly one second, then pulling out 3 straight powers and 30s the next. Teams like Maggie Walker and Blair would dread playing against us, due to our renowned unpredictability. Why so unpredictable? Because we never attempted to fill our cups, with quizbowl or any other communal activity.

Once you put your whole focus into beating this team, your cup starts to fill rapidly, with every loss bringing it nearly to spillage.

Light some sage in your practice room and go on a rap with your teammates, and try to find some new goals. Back in high school, for Oakland Mills, these would be things like: find the best/worst place to eat, beat Aidan Mehigan to a power or two, beat that one good lit player to a poetry buzz, hang out with cool dudes like Sameen, etc, etc.

Our goals, whatever they were, were never predictable. Grow into a community of organic intellectuals (following Gramsci and Arcimboldo). Where will you go: who can predict? Where will you go: straight to the soul.
IKD
Yale 18
Oakland Mills 14
"I am the NAQT beast I worship."
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AGoodMan
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Re: Frustrations

Post by AGoodMan »

JakobeanEra wrote:
Buzzersout4harambe wrote:I'm really frustrated because our team is really good, but we always finish second to one of the best teams in our state. This season we finished second in conference, second at a local tournament in December, second in sectionals last year, second in history bowl, and now we will not have the opportunity to win regionals because we have been put in a bracket with them. We have a good team but never get any recognition for anything because they run the area. Can anyone relate to this? We will be at nationals in December but other than that I feel like we have literally nothing going for us and I have just been wasting my time with scholastic bowl.

User was reminded to enable a signature. --Mgmt.
My team always gets put in the same sectional as IMSA, which for some reason we always lose to, so it's fair to say I know this feeling. It sucks, but trust me, as long as you've learned anything, made one new friend, or had one good experience with your teammates, you haven't wasted anything. Even if your team doesn't win anything in High School, there's always College. Take heart, patch yourself up, get better, and enjoy the fact that you're playing on a "really good" team.
Dude if you were frustrated, imagine me playing you like 15 times in my quiz bowl career.
Jon Suh
Wheaton Warrenville South High School '16
Harvard '20
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El Salvadoreno
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Re: Frustrations

Post by El Salvadoreno »

In my opinion, this post is already setting you up for failure. If you believe you are going to lose, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy foreshadowing your loss. That does not mean you do say you can and do not work for it. That also does not mean you become this guy. As this thread shows anyone can be anyone any given Saturday. You just need to work hard, have fun, and believe.
Ricky "Slick Rick/Rico Suave" Rivera
Carmel Catholic- Class of '17
Notre Dame (Mendoza)- Class of '22

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Skepticism and Animal Feed
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Re: Frustrations

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

There can only be one. Well, OK - so actually there can only be three (for high school) and two (for college) national champions each year in quizbowl, not counting subsidiary titles like DII, UG, Small Schools, etc. Two is not a winner, and three nobody remembers.

Your odds of being one of those winners increases the harder you work, but ultimately you can't guarantee it. Somebody might work harder than you. The editors of the national championship might unknowingly write a packet that contains all of the favorite pet topics of the team you'll be playing that round. I don't think there's ever been a team in quizbowl history that worked harder than 2015 UVA and they didn't even make the finals at ACF Nationals that year.

Winning is fun and you should try your hardest to win. But you should have a backup plan: learn to enjoy the non-winning parts of quizbowl too, so you'll still end up having fun even if you don't win.
Bruce
Harvard '10 / UChicago '07 / Roycemore School '04
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wherewasmybrain
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Re: Frustrations

Post by wherewasmybrain »

Wow, reading this post is like deja vu all over again.

So, after I finished my final high school tournament, (well, the last high school tournament that we had any chance of winning, I was under no delusion that our team was winning nationals), I made a post damn similar to yours, I'll link it at the end of this post.

A team that you can't get out under the shadow of, they run the area, perpetual runners up? That about describes my experience (and several other schools' experiences as well I'm sure), from my freshman year to junior year of high school. Ezell Harding dominated the Tennessee quizbowl scene. There were a few times they were upset, but it was basically that if it was a Tennessee tournament, and they were in it, they were gonna win. Senior year, we never won a tournament either. We just continually came up short. In my mind, I was a failure. And it's so goddamn easy to think that. You can drive yourself crazy with, "If I just had answered a bit faster" or "if I had just studied this" or "if only we hadn't been matched up against them".
Winning is fun and you should try your hardest to win. But you should have a backup plan: learn to enjoy the non-winning parts of quizbowl too, so you'll still end up having fun even if you don't win.
Bruce, I think you gave the same advice on the post I made, and it's damn good advice. Sure, I love it when I get a crazy power on a tough tossup and it wins us the match. I love pulling off a crazy comeback victory. I love winning in quizbowl. But that stuff isn't what I really remember.

I remember when we were on local TV quizbowl show and my cocaptain, after being told that all answers in this "lightning round" would start and end with "O", answered with "Oklahoma City" instead of "Orlando". I remember when my quizbowl mentor yelled out "ASS ASS ASS" as an answer to a trash question. I remember telling long jokes on the bus rides back from tournaments in the middle of nowhere, holding a fifth place trophy as everyone groans at my terrible pun. I remember answering "The rebel-imperial question from star wars" when the answer was really the Sepoy Mutiny. I remember making a trash packet made entirely of inside jokes for the final practice of the year. I remember meeting people from all different places, and making friends that I would have otherwise never met. I remember the community and companionship that quizbowl fostered in my life. I remember spending time with Youssef, Jacob, Alex, Eric, Tom, Brad, Lauren, Case, Jesse, Rohan, Victor, Matthew, Mark, Margaret, Mattise, Elliott, Conor, the list just goes on.

So now, I'm in college. For reasons that don't need to be discussed in this post, I no longer do quizbowl. However, I joined our Model UN club, and that gave me what I loved out of quizbowl: the "Cheers" atmosphere, you know, "Sometimes you want to go / where everybody knows your name". It has that same atmosphere that I loved in my high school quizbowl days. And you know what? I'm getting third place in MUN competitions, but now I don't give a :capybara:. Well, I do, I just give less of a :capybara:.

So, have I made peace with not winning any quizbowl tournaments in what was almost certainly my quizbowl career? Nah, probably not. I'll make peace with it sometime between retirement and death, if I do it at all. But hey, I'm still damn happy that I chose quizbowl.

I didn't win anything, even once. You know what? If I could do it all again, the exact same way, I would. In a heartbeat.

Winning is great, but it's the icing on the cake. Find a cake that you like first.

http://www.hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewto ... =6&t=18467
Aidan Rowan
University School of Nashville '16
Tufts '20
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Good Goblin Housekeeping
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Re: Frustrations

Post by Good Goblin Housekeeping »

Andrew Wang
Illinois 2016
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