As it turns out this weekend at the Western States Novice Debate Championships which was held here at Sacramento State (thank goodness, sleeping in my own bed meant I was way more rested for the insane amount of debate I did) we won five of eight rounds. We made it to eliminations and won the first round and lost in the quarterfinals to Cal Poly. I was more than relieved. Every time the judge(s) announced that we had won I was shocked out of my mind. And losing in the quarters lifted this huge weight of anxiety off of my shoulders, I'm still new and my debate partner just joined the team with no prior debate knowledge a full two weeks ago, we were exhausted. Each debate round is approximately 1.5-2 hours, and in eight rounds that means we debated at least 12 hours in three days. That's a lot. I'm so mentally tired that I can't even write.

Seven months ago I was completely ignorant of the strange little niche in academia called policy debate, nor did I understand the way it will unexpectedly pervade one's life. The basics of a debate round are this:

• Two people per team. One team is called the Affirmative (their job is to argue in favor of a change in some US policy) and the other team is called the Negative (who simply argues against the Affirmative, not the policy, per say).
• Their are two types of speeches given in each round, a constructive speech (nine minutes) and a rebuttal speech (six minutes). Each person will give one of each, and in between the constructive speeches there is a three-minute cross-examination. The only true rules in policy debate are the time limits, almost everything else is fair game.

There are about a million other things about debate I can talk about, but that's the very basic gist of it. The problem I'm having right now is that it's basically taken over my life. I still have time for other things, of course, and I would go crazy if I spent all of my free time working on debate stuff, but I find it popping into my head at random times throughout my days. I will have dreams about it furthering the proof that it has somehow weaseled its way into my life. I was working on it last night and was so excited when I came up with a new argument we could use.

The good thing about debate is that I've met some really interesting people, I like the intellectual challenge of it, and I get to go to New Orleans in April. The bad parts include my partial dislike of the team coaches, the fact that I spent a weekend in Modesto last month (I'm convinced that Modesto is where dreams go to die), and the intense pressure that one experiences at a tournament. It's enough to make someone crack, as I did in the middle of a round in Modesto. I'm talking full-out, tears streaming down the face crackage (the funny part of this story is that I got up to do my speech and I said "I apologize for the waterworks, someone must be cutting onions in the building," and the judge said "It's just been raining on your face." Flight of the Conchords FTW!). And I'm not the only one who was like that! I watched a varsity (I debate in the novice division with all of the other newbies) debate and this poor girl from Cal Poly SLO started crying, and I knew exactly how she felt.

And that picture? First thing that popped up when I typed in "debate clipart" and no, it really looks nothing like that. Think more along the lines of unkempt and tired college students lugging around Rubbermaid tubs full of expandable file folders full of evidence and reading it as fast as humanly possible.