The First Tournament of the Year

Now, this might be you right now. Stop me if it's not. You might be thinking, "Wait. The first tournament of the year? Why is she writing about that now? It's like, mid-October. Doesn't she try to correspond the posts to what's actually going on in real life? Like, the Christmas post came in December, and the summer posts go in the summer, and the graduation post came right about when people were graduating, but this? This is just silly."

Well, guess what, you hypothetical reader, you? If you're not located in SoCal like I am aware many of you, in fact, are, then I ought to tell you that even though I told you last time that non-Californians are weird, the truth is Californians are weird too, and you ought to know that we had a tournament last week. There. I said it. A legitimate qualifying, checkmark-distributing, speechranks-official competition in stinkin' October because we're insane. I'm serious. I'm not teasing. And we're excited also. Oh, so excited. And competitive. Really, really competitive. But it turns out Oregon had a tournament too, and at least some of the people there were non-Californians. So I guess it's not just us.

The first tournament of the year is a marvelous invention. Without it, no other tournaments could come about it. Literally. When I was a small child (non-unique) I used to use the phrase "There's a first time for everything" as an excuse to get my timid friends to go on rollar coasters and do other stuff they'd never done, but even when I was in early elementary school I was aware that there was not necessarily a first time for everything. The other kids didn't know that. Anyway, my point is, when it comes to tournament seasons, there's a first one for every year, and that is actually necessary for said tournament season to exist. Point B is that this tournament is great. Why? Because it's fun to get back into the swing of things and see people again and warm up our forlorn voices and get judged and all that good stuff. You know that feeling of exhilaration that inevitably accompanies a competition, no matter how unprepared everyone is? Yea, you get that too, and that's cool.

Additionally, if you go to an early tournament, you have really good odds of being one of the top people on speechranks. I'm on the "first page" (top 60) right now, and all I have is one measly checkmark. Never mind that there are only 2-and-a-half pages, I'm on the first one! That's a big deal, you guys. Please pretend to be excited for me. Plus, I'm halfway qualified to NITOC in impromptu right now. A lot of people are halfway qualified in something. And we've got like, forever to earn that second recherché check. So excuse us if we're feeling super terrific.

You know what being done with the first tournament of the year means, right? It means another tournament is just around the corner. Tonight, while we were washing dishes, my charming sister reminded me that we have a real, live debate qualifier in less than a month.

Lovely.

First things first: you're homeschooled, and this year is going to be fun.