Taking Forever To Fully Recover From a Tournament

I didn't debate last year. I just speech-ed. That meant a significantly less amount of early mornings and late nights than I have experienced this year. My mom attempted to talk me out of debating so that those early mornings and late nights would be less likely to occur, but it was to no avail. Yes sir, now I have experienced my fair share of early mornings and late nights at tournaments. It's not that we stay up and party at tournaments. No, we stay up and argue with each other. It's way less cool.

You know that moment at a tournament where it just hits you how tired you are? Maybe it's when you look over at your partner before the 2NR when there's 1:40 left on the prep time clock and ask what his responses are and he stares at you like you're crazy and says, "This is your speech." Maybe it's at 11:30 PM when you're crawling into bed wondering if you remembered to give all of your speeches in Pattern B or if you forgot one or two so you stay awake thinking about it for another 45 minutes or so. Maybe it's when the tournament was running a bit behind or something, and for whatever reason they decided to post when you haven't even given all your IEs from the last pattern yet, so you hurry up and do those and then run over to your room only to find out that SURPRISE! there's a class going on in there and they have to relocate you, so you wait outside for 15 minutes for your partner and the judge and the tournament people and then you carry all of your stuff down several flights of stairs and way over to the big, smelly gym where you set up shop and get ready to go Neg against what proves to be Abolish the Death Tax for the twelveteenth time and just as you finish the Disads you had virtually memorized in the 2NC, you sit down and then the other team yells at you and you're like, "What? Oh yea, Cross-Ex. I forgot about that." Not that that happened to me the 4th round of the last tournament. (Was it 4th? It might have been 6th. I don't remember. I don't even think I knew at the time.)

But then, that sneaky tournament is almost over. And you're like, Whoa. It's Saturday? Where did that come from? And then it's the awards ceremony and you half-heartedly clap for ten-hundred people. Then it's over. You vaguely remember your friend winning... something. And you glance at your hands to discover that you somehow came out with a trophy and then notice several medals around your neck and you're not sure how either of those shiny things got there. Your mom asks you what place you got in ____ and you have no idea and tell her to check speechranks in a couple days.

Then comes the good part. You go home and sleeep and sleeeep and sleepandsleepandsleep. For days. Weeks even. You take like nine days off from thinking about speech and debate (except for a few hours Monday night) and try to get caught up on your homework. Because, seriously. The next tournament is in, what? Two weeks? You've got all the time in the world to recover from the last one.

hahaha. Yea right.

You're homeschooled and takin' it easy.