Dartmouth... whut whuuuuuuuuut.
A solid night of much needed sleep later, I am back from Dartmouth and proud to say that I've made a full recovery and that Dan finally "got found." Leading up to leaving I managed to nab about 3 hours of sleep and Friday night's cramped and vomity floor space housing accommodation didn't bring much REM, so last night I came back and crashed around 10pm and just managed to see the light of day now. I usually don't devote much attention to debate on this blog, but I feel prompted to this time. This tournament - I had a good time, but I might have been the only one in our battalion. It seemed to be a breaking point for the three resilient novices, who all at the same moment decided to have an existential crisis about their involvement in this activity and their respective places in the universe. To that end, the coldest night of the year served as the appropriate backdrop and, for them, some crappy beer sloshly keg parties failed to bring a sufficient remedy or justification to bother doing this anymore. In my book, considering that I arrived late and missed two rounds, the dinner was decent, too many cups of draft beer served as a band-aid for all of life's shortcomings and guided me straight into the land of loudness and giggles, a place I haven't visited in a while, and I thought the banquet was impressive as well. Dan accompanied me on my trip to the never neverland of sorts, but continued straight through to the valley of blackout and sickness, puked on the floor a few times (and by the floor I mean "us"), and then left to go to the bathroom apparently. Disorientated and not remembering where we were staying, he passed the rest of the evening on some futon in an unknown guy's room on a different floor - he surfaced sometime after fourth round. So we tag teamed this tournament - he did the first two rounds iron man, we came by and gave each other a big high five in the third, I did the fourth alone, and we debated the fifth round together. It's really pathetic, but it worked for us, and all things considered, we had favorable results. If iron men could have picked up - which Dan did illegally in one round - this could have been a very good weekend for Midd A. Usually APDA debates are about this horribly obscure "jury" procedures or semi-philosophical things about what a hypothetical person should do in a fictional situation, but this weekend was filled with lots of talk about Iraq, Afghanistan, and North Korea - good to see that people aren't afraid to talk about things that matter every now and again. Additionally, I've always liked several people on the Dartmouth debate team and this weekend, a few of them came through with being especially considerate and accommodating, and it restored my faith in people as a whole. By the by, debaters tend to be a selfish and inconsiderate group - no one says thank you, they make huge messes and expect for someone else to clean up afterward, all the while caveching, complaining, and debating one another instead of just talking - few people ever go out of their way to ever see that people are treated well. The fact we were treated well this weekend - it put me in an especially good mood because it's so rare (in debate), but as far as I am concerned, it's the most important thing in life. In my book, doing the right thing is almost always equated with being friendly, solving problems when they arise, being a good host, learning and remebering people's names, and taking a step back to make sure that people have what they need. I deeply appreciated the Dartmouth team this weekend.
All in all, the Midd Debate Society has drifted into a pretty lousy state. Honestly, the reason I am still involved in debate has nothing to do with the glory or prestige of winning, mainly because for one reason or another, I never do well. I don't spend much time preparing cases, I don't read the paper as often as I'd like, I never get enough sleep to be impressively articulate, I refuse to play APDA politics, and I always drink too much when the opportunity presents itself, usually slamming Saturday's debate performance directly into the toilet. In defense of my involvement - we usually always have rental cars and are up to date on paperwork and registration info. But just the same, this weekend sealed the deal on being the black sheep of the debate world - or at least on par with thuggish Rutgers. In the car coming home, everyone agreed that this behavior needs to stop - well, at least after McGill next weekend, where we've all pledged to take full advantage of open bar at the Molson Room and legal underage drinking with play money - as Jeremy said, "Lisa won't be around in two weeks and Dan knows better." For some reason, I suspect that the solution to this problem is a little harder than how we rectified our awfully loud and awful behavior on Friday - in that case, I taped $20 to the door and left. I wish the team all the best in their reformist pursuits - and hopefully the novices will come around and decide that this is an activity where they can find a niche, even if it has a lot more to do with travel and tighter friends from Middlebury than trophies and speaker scores. If you go in expecting no more than that, are content with that, then debate will never disappoint you.
Thanks to the god of illegally pirated media, I was able to see (significant portions of)
Catch Me If you Can and
Chicago, an added bonus.
Justin is in town today and since I slumbered through the rest of his visit, I plan to grab dinner with him tonight. He's promised to return the last week in January to do some map work in Addison County while Nathan is out of town and living it up in New York. It'll be nice to have him around for my last week. Last night was actually my last real Saturday night at Midd and how did I spend it you ask - sleeping. No regrets here, there have been plenty of Saturday nights - and surely, there will be plenty more to come, in places other than here.
posted by lmjasinski at 2:10 PM
