So I’m sure that most of you know that the AD district competition was this week (well, of the ppl who actually read this). It’s been pretty sucky, until today that is.
Pretty much the entire week was hardcore studying. We seemed to have a crazy amount of afterschool crap to do, and by the time that was done, I had to get home and study for a normal test (which turned out pretty okay as well). After doing that, I had to squeeze in AD time, ended up getting several hrs less sleep than normal every day, then waking up early to go into school a bit earlier to study for AD.
I’m still wondering why I did it, since we pretty much already knew the team, but I felt empowered ‘neways.
Well, we finally get to yesterday, when we have our speech and interview at mayde (details at http://www.xanga.com/chiefooo). As for myself, my interview was probably the crappiest thing that I’ve ever done. Since I’ve come to high school, I have never EVER been nervous about this type of stuff. Region band? Whatever. Romeo & Juliet? Just get it over with. But for once, I was actually pretty nervous, for reasons I still can’t figure out. I pretty much got owned on it, just like all the subjective tests (speech, interview, and essay), which are supposed to be score pullers, not droppers. Well, they ask me some questions, and it ends up on some pretty predictable topics, but they kept going back to “What are you doing after high school”, “Where are you going to college”, “How do you plan to research what you want to do”, blah blah blah. I pretty much went flat out honest (which I now know is a terrible thing to do; in an interview, lie. It’s for the best, really), which was “I honestly have not thought about it, so I don’t know”. Now that I think about it, I think they kept asking to give me another chance to answer it how they wanted, but I guess I wasn’t thinking about that at the time. I made a couple other minors mistakes (several umm’s, and I think one “like”), but that whole not knowing what to do with my life really hurt me.
Speech was interesting. If you haven’t heard my speech and happen to care ‘nething about human cognitive functions (I swear it’s much easier to understand than you think), I’ll recite it, but ya. So my speech is normally about in time (time requirement 3:30 to 4:00), even when I rush, since I normally rush. But apparently I was going superspeed at districts, even though I thought I was going slower, so I had to add on a fake sentence at the time to sneak in at 3:35. Then impromptu.
Impromptu is 3 unknown prompts (stuff like “What do you think is your greatest asset and why”, “If you could go back in time, where would you go”, or “What is the biggest problem int he world today”, but more specific) that I get to see and pick one of, and think about in 1 minute, then give a 1 1/2 to 2 min speech on it. I’m normally okay at it, managing at least to have a basic structure with relatively good fluency, but I completely blew it yesterday. There were 2 really stupid prompts, and then “Obese kids sue McD. Explain the social impact of this”, so I’m thinking, “okay, I can talk about our inability to take responsibility, our lack of willpower, our greed, how stupid americans look to other nations, etc”, and I had it all planned out in my mind. But I start talking, and I have absolutely no clue how to find the words I was looking for. I would say something like, “These children face the…. *10 sec pause*… osctracism” and so on. It was pretty darn terrible. But PAST the actual AD part of it, it was a blast in the room.
Today we had the written part of districts, which involves 7 tests in a row. Once again at Mayde, I felt that I had done less than I should have, guessing on way too many and so on, which bothered me a lot, but it ended up okay. When we got to SQ relay (the exciting part of AD where they put 5 consecutive questions up on an overhead and then you answer and get scored on the spot, then the next person on the team does the same), me and willie got lumped into the same round, both going 3/5, missing the same problems. I felt pretty good about that, since I only ended up reading half of that packet in my emergency studying during the past 2 weeks.
Well, we get back to the school, where the teachers announce the scores. David Neville totally owns, about 400 pts ahead of the next (sizable, but not THAT big; out of 10000), whom I was very proud of. Steven and Shashank are about 20 pts away from each other behind DNev, finishing out the honors spots. Me and Willie were about 200 pts behind them, with willie about 70 pts (basically nothing) behind me, both having the “alternate” spot (AKA do nothing). While I didn’t make the cut, I felt pretty good about it, scoring quite well for what I know was less than my best effort studying before. Fortunately, our team was quite congradulatory about it all, with none of the stupid drama and petty jealously that I know often plagues other organizations within the school. Kennan, Ankita, and Rodrigo (w/ Nick alternate) take the B spots, while Kosine, Alex, and Aseem made C team.
Perhaps I should be disappointed, having spent $75 and countless hours *cough cough* studying for this and worrying way too much, all for nothing, but I figure that I’ve gained something. I’ll be ready for next year.
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