Whoa, guys, chill! I thought I'd figured this out and was content to let it go, but it seems my information was very, very incomplete. But I guess it's a good thing that you've now made me aware of my misunderstandings, so now we can try to fix them.
First things first,
thank you to Mike Perovanovic for finally explaining all the things that happened before I arrived. I did not use the best word choice in my initial approach, largely because of my ignorance of all these things, and now it makes a lot more sense why Ulysses didn't even deign to tell me what was going on behind the scenes. I'm glad Mike did tell me, or I'd never have known that an apology was in order. None of this information was available to me last semester, so I was indeed ignorant then. I appreciate Mike's crucial help in making me a little less ignorant, and I apologize for anything I might have said wrong due to my previous incomplete information.
It's now evident to me that several misunderstandings have occurred.
The first one is that when I made my very first post, I had no knowledge of how Illinois teams work. The only solid information I had coming in was 1) the way things worked "back home" in Arizona; 2) NAQT eligibility rules for playing quizbowl at a multi-campus institution (my previous school had no such issue); 3) stats and chitchat from various ICT's I attended, which told me that Illinois had a lot of super-strong college teams, of which at least one (U-Chicago) was historically very well funded; 4) stats from tournaments showing that UIC appears almost entirely at novice events that I wouldn’t be welcome at.
In Arizona, paying out of pocket to attend tournaments is just not something that is done. When I was at Arizona State, I was usually alone in my willingness to pay anything over $15 or $20 for a tournament trip (and due to our remote location, we always had to pay for hotels, remember) and my teammates were always very unhappy about having to contribute even that much. That was a large part of the motivation for us to host high school tournaments and seek institutional funds. Once we finally had our funding apparatus running, the general understanding was that we would only go to a tournament if the club could pay all non-food expenses. Except for one year when we managed to get administration funding, we could never attend both nationals in the same year, and our opportunities to meet and be inspired by better teams were limited. This is one major factor that has slowed the Arizona State club’s development.
During my time in Arizona the high school circuit has improved a great deal, but other states (like, say, Illinois) always had far more teams and larger field sizes at high school tournaments. Based on this, and on how well teams like UIUC/Northwestern/U-Chicago were doing, and their shorter driving distances to tournaments (thus probably lower or no hotel expenses), I figured that this circuit’s financial situation had to be as good or better than that in Arizona.
Due to this inaccurate belief and to cultural differences, I greatly underestimated the amount I needed to contribute in order to be accepted by teams in this region. After three exhausting years of building my undergraduate club from scratch, and two more trying to get them sustainable, I was really looking forward to finally being able to join an intact club that wouldn’t need me to personally do a lot of things to keep everything running and recruit teammates. This was an honest mistake on my part and given the lack of information on both sides, I don’t blame Ike Jose and other UIUC people for taking offense at my initial approach. It was an accidental clash of cultures, and as the foreigner in Rome (or in this case, Illinois), I take responsibility for the misunderstanding.
At Arizona State, we often struggled to field full teams, so pretty much anyone would’ve been allowed to walk in and play our next tournament. I believe some of my former teammates resented me for hoping that they would be as dedicated players as I was, and it took me years to figure out that I needed to adjust my expectations to match the team I had. I had to learn, as a coach, to meet my team where they were, not where I aspired for them to be. And I was consistently among the only two or three members who were willing to write packets. We never had more than that.
Not until I started this thread did I encounter the idea of a quizbowl club that could afford to be selective about who would be allowed to play for it. I’m truly impressed that such teams exist and tip my hat to their dedication. I can also see why such a hardworking team might look down on someone who didn’t seem as serious as they themselves are, and why such a team might be angry at the perceived presumption of someone (me, in August 2013) who thought they could just “walk on.”
Thus, I can understand why Ike and other past/present members of the great UIUC club would have been offended, and I apologize to anyone who was.
You may notice that I promptly withdrew my request to play with the UIUC club after discovering that they were not as well-heeled as I thought. Later, after Ulysses told me UIC was disbanding, I wrote to Billy at UIUC and offered to help with their housewrite. I can only assume it was too late to reverse my poor first impression, and that UIUC had already decided I was useless to them. That’s just basic human psychology, so I don’t blame them. Had I known in August 2013 what I do now, I would have offered to help with question-writing at the very outset and asked how much I would be expected to write in order to earn a spot on their team. It’s very plausible that they would have required more of me than I could write, because they are that good of a team, and in that case the situation would have ended up exactly as it is now. But the negotiation never even started because of the above string of misunderstandings, and since I’m the foreign transplant, I'll accept the blame for that.
Incidentally, I was finally able to meet some of the UIUC people earlier this month at Cane Ridge Revival. I tried to join a free-agent team first, but those formed even numbers without me, and then some last-minute drops reduced UIUC’s two teams to 5 total players, so I ended up helping them out (I’m glad I was finally able to be of some use to them after all). I paid for 1/6 of their registration that time, but a logical extension of Mike Cheyne’s idea would be that I could have arranged to pay in tossups and bonuses instead.
Since my reliability has been questioned by name, I think it’s only fair to point out that I have no track record since no one has asked me to help write anything. I realize that's probably my fault again (see above), and I’ll clear this up with a statement. I have never been anything but honest about my limitations as both a player and a writer – Mike Cheyne is 10 times better at quizbowl than I am, and I respect him for that. I can only say that I won’t make any promises I can’t keep, and that if I’m asked to write more than I have time for, I’ll be up-front about it, and that if I ever agree to write a specific bunch of questions for someone by a specific time, then my agreement indicates that I can and will do so.
I hope my playing skill level is not relevant to this discussion, because I never thought myself deserving of an A-team spot. If anyone’s judging me because I’m a worse player than you, then I can’t really argue, because it’s true and you can even prove it with my recent tournament stats. My only niggling doubt would be how many people don’t play D1 because they sense this judgment, implying they’re not ‘earning their place’ in quizbowl, in some way.
I will continue to be up-front about my abilities, and if they aren’t sufficient to be useful to either of my institution’s teams, then I won’t burden them with my presence. If they are, then both of those teams know where to find me.
I hope that clears up all the issues involving me and UIUC people. Now, there seems to have been a separate misunderstanding with UIC, and that apology is next.
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Edward Elric wrote:Now enter this year. Ulysses, Blake and Margaret played one tournament in the fall I believe. They have all been busy with their respective majors and because of a number of factors (laziness and large work loads plus Ulysses graduating from UG in December), they have not written any questions to play submission tournaments (like ACF Fall or ACF Regs which UIC attended in the past during the most recent iteration of the team). Kenneth Lan saying that he wanted to play QB but not practice, contribute funds for tournament entry or help out the team in any way really brought back memories of Rom. Honestly though, as much as Rom did not contribute monetarily, he at least came to practices and tried to make us better. Ulysses made the decision to not allow him to join the collective of UIC people that still were planning to attend tournaments.
As discussed above, I was ignorant of your situation and the expectations you might have for a potential member, and had I known better, I would have been more clear about my willingness to contribute a proportional share of whatever resource (tossups, bonuses, money) was needed. Even though I would’ve been the only D1 player (like Rom) and I have good evidence that Ulysses wouldn’t have played with me for that reason, we could still have reached that conclusion much more efficiently and amicably. This is, again, my fault being the outsider, and I apologize.
Edward Elric wrote:Ulysses made the decision to not allow him [Kenneth] to join the collective of UIC people that still were planning to attend tournaments. Ulysses I also believe contacted him directly saying to the tune of what I indicated.
For future reference, I would have appreciated Ulysses being less roundabout, because that was not the message I got from him. This is the PM Ulysses sent to me, after I sent him a PM, an e-mail, and another PM:
Mexdude wrote:This is my last semester so trying to bring this thing back after the University randomly cut it this past semester is the last thing on my mind. Blake isn't an administrator (I don't see him leading anything) and Margaret is spaced from this at the moment. Quizbowl here died. If I am free and got $$, then I'll probably play some easy difficulty tournament solo or with Blake but I won't trouble myself going/paying to a normal-hard tournament, I know my intellectual limits. You are probably much better off playing with the Illinois club since they go to normal-hard difficulty tournaments where graduates can play. If you got the "Illinois doesn't want me" attitude from just Ike and noone else then ignore that cause I believe Ike just graduated last season so he shouldn't be influencing the Illinois club anymore since he is no longer a student there. It's Billy Busse you should talk to just don't look like a free-loader and say you just want to play tournaments with them paying for you. You have to contribute with them in some way such as helping them write packets or staff their tournaments.
I took Ulysses at his word and, as described above, sent a PM to Billy, got no response at the time, and have only now gotten things cleared up with UIUC.
Edward Elric wrote:no one at any time said that UIC would refuse to play as a Division 1 team. We never played as a D1 team because besides Rom no one else on the team was eligible for D1 and we were never good enough to attend higher difficulty tournaments then ACF Regs. Also as a commuter school, we had a hard time recruiting and running practices since we all lived off campus and with classes and work never had overlapping schedules.
For all future people who want to attend UIC, feel free to contact the name on the College contact list (Ulysses), which I updated before I graduated. I know there are three wonderful people who would not mind playing tournaments if they have someone else being the impetus to get better, attend tournaments or join in practices, etc.
Mike, I don’t know if there was maybe some miscommunication between you and Ulysses, and I really did not want to have to make this post, but I think I have to in order to solve the ongoing factual dispute here. I stumbled across this in December 2013 but specifically held it back from my public post in an attempt to be nice, because I accepted that Ulysses et al’s current team didn’t want to play D1 with me and that was all I needed to know for my own closure. However, since the issue hasn't just gone away as I hoped, I think the only solution now is complete transparency.
Ulysses Capistran (on Facebook) wrote:I also got some minor issue with a medical graduate guy who wants us to start an organization and try to get funding but I know that won't happen (a university doesn't just cut a team and then want it back the next semester) and this is my last semester so I don't wanna get involved in starting a club that can die when I leave. He also sounds like a free loader wanting someone to pay for him so he can go to hard tournaments so I'mma just tell him to f off. undergrad noobs only!
I want to be clear that I do not blame either Mike or Ulysses (or anyone else at UIC) for the decision to trick me into thinking UIC’s team was disbanded, rather than openly banning me from the team and telling me why. (Had they done so, I would have been alerted to the misunderstanding then and we could have immediately fixed it, but hindsight is always 20/20 so I'm not blaming them.) I also do not think UIC is, or should be, obligated to play tournaments more difficult than they're capable of enjoying. I understand why Ulysses et al didn’t want me on their team, I’ve acknowledged my part of the responsibility for it (I was culturally unaware such that I made Ulysses think I wouldn’t contribute and Mike think I was annoying), and I’m sure Ulysses had reasons for handling it sneakily rather than openly. I just want to set the record straight on the idea that UIC had anyone willing to play D1 at the time I inquired: they did not. In August of 2013, UIC’s team had no use for a D1 player and no plans for long-term survival, and I therefore would have been of no use to them. If that situation has now changed, I have no way of knowing about it unless someone with knowledge of the UIC team directly informs me.
It is unfortunate that well-intentioned mistakes on both sides prevented this misunderstanding from being resolved long before now, but we are human, we all make mistakes, I hold no grudges and blame no one else for what happened here, and I’m glad we did clear things up in the end.
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In conclusion: Thank you to everyone who contributed to enlightening me, and to all Illinois/UI(U)C quizbowlers, I’m sorry we got off to such a rocky start and that it took this long to figure everything out and get to the bottom of it. I hope you will let me make it up to you in whatever way I can during my next few years here! You guys are great and I wish I could have been in a circuit like yours during my undergraduate years. If there’s anything else I should know, please do enlighten me further. ^_^