Effectively Stock-Studying for Nationals

[Roastie_Ghostie]

I’ve been doing pretty good with questions in my category (History/CE) but I found one issue that I feel I need to tackle before NAQT Nationals in May.

S T O C K C L U E S

These are the death of me, as I have little to no interest in them (at least for stock outside my categories, i.e., Science and Lit), yet they are essential to actually doing well in tournaments. So I want to ask, "What is the best study routine to effectively tackle these while studying for nationals?"

Also, any tips for nationals, in general, are helpful, and any tips for studying anything besides stuff I love.

[Good Goblin Housekeeping]

These are just clues that show up in packets. Read a lot of packets/questions and you will notice things come up, sometimes you will forget what you want to say when hear those things, in which case you should take the hint and look them up. You can also just look up specific answerlines in like a database or something and see what clues come up, or you can look up individual clues and see how often they come up. There isn't really a magic trick to it, almost everything comes naturally from regular study and/or practice. Many of these so-called "stock clues" are just core facts or details about things that often are worth reading more about or can be rewarding to learn about outside of just learning how to binary an answer (and also often let you buzz on a description instead of a name).

Unsurprisingly current events will not work that way, but presumably that has not been your problem

[quizbowlchamp1]

I’ve been doing pretty good with questions in my category (History/CE) but I found one issue that I feel I need to tackle before NAQT Nationals in May.

S T O C K C L U E S

These are the death of me, as I have little to no interest in them (at least for stock outside my categories, i.e., Science and Lit), yet they are essential to actually doing well in tournaments. So I want to ask, "What is the best study routine to effectively tackle these while studying for nationals?"

Also, any tips for nationals, in general, are helpful, and any tips for studying anything besides stuff I love.

Ok, first off, if you don't like a category, don't force yourself to study it. Don't make quizbowl a chore. It's a game. Have fun.

Also, you mentioned tackling stock in Science & Lit. If you are a history player, and you dislike these subjects. The most useful thing for you may be to coerce your teammates into picking up these subjects. It would be useful for your team to have a "history player" (you) a "science player" and a "lit player". That way, you have 3 players that each cover the "Big 3" categories & you won't feel like all the pressure is on you.

Hope this helps,
Russ

[quizbowlcaptain]

I’ve been doing pretty good with questions in my category (History/CE) but I found one issue that I feel I need to tackle before NAQT Nationals in May.

S T O C K C L U E S

These are the death of me, as I have little to no interest in them (at least for stock outside my categories, i.e., Science and Lit), yet they are essential to actually doing well in tournaments. So I want to ask, "What is the best study routine to effectively tackle these while studying for nationals?"

Also, any tips for nationals, in general, are helpful, and any tips for studying anything besides stuff I love.

Ok, first off, if you don't like a category, don't force yourself to study it. Don't make quizbowl a chore. It's a game. Have fun.

Also, you mentioned tackling stock in Science & Lit. If you are a history player, and you dislike these subjects. The most useful thing for you may be to coerce your teammates into picking up these subjects. It would be useful for your team to have a "history player" (you) a "science player" and a "lit player". That way, you have 3 players that each cover the "Big 3" categories & you won't feel like all the pressure is on you.

Hope this helps,
Russ

I agree with this post. Quizbowl is meant to be fun. Be dedicated, but don't make it feel like you have to study. For stockclues, I recommend Quizolytics. It is a website where you can input an answer line and it will give you stockclues back. Unfortunately, it will give some bad stockclues as it just shows words and groups of words that come up the most (for example, I'm a sci main and I've seen organism and element as stock clues, which make no sense) Just use the control + f command and read the questions that come up to ensure it is an actually good clue.

[helloiamsomeone]

If yo u do a lot of QB Reader and you see a tossup mentioned twice, try and see what clues (or stocks) match up. You can also go to QB Reader database and grind clues there. You can choose cat and difficulty.
Bye

[Somewhere in the Stratosphere]

use quizolytics!

[BuenaZinc]

use quizolytics!

best way to use quizolytics? (never even heard of it)

User was reminded to add a signature --- the mgmt

[Somewhere in the Stratosphere]

use quizolytics!

best way to use quizolytics? (never even heard of it)

User was reminded to add a signature --- the mgmt

Basically just find the most common words that are actually relevant to the subject (sometimes the AI picks up random words, ignore those) and Google them to research them. It's helped me immensely with science!

[Jacksondahammerbidney]

honestly as a specialist stock is something that just comes up... studying stock is not nearly as hard as it is made out to be

[knawaz]

here's a haiku I made that will help:

don't burn yourself out
play on 1 diff lots and lots and
take your time and learn

in all seriousness you have almost a year ahead of you (in preparation for nats) to learn and grow as a player. if you really are passionate about history, go super deep in history. learn the nitty gritty details of events, things, etc. that other people don't know and don't have any interest in knowing. once you feel you have accomplished this (can scale decently well, hopefully to the regs difficulty) then focus on learning stock, which can be done by grinding out tons of 1 diff questions via qbreader. you will begin seeing things that repeatedly come up (ie: tom sawyer shouting david and goliath). as some other people have said, use your teammates. they will likely be your biggest help. in all honesty I did not have the support around me that I desired this year but that didn't matter, because i had fun playing.

best of luck