I ended up short a teammate on the weekend (which is a bit of a shit considering the fact that British Parliamentary (BP) style debating is in teams of two), so in a fit of hardcore motherfuckery I decided to just go it solo.
Round 1 I ended up filling in on a University of Sydney (USU) team, debating the motion This house believes that Atheists should organise. We were CG and got the third, arguing that the whole idea of the Atheist movement was that they could go out on their own and figure out for themselves what they believe. The adjudicator was my older sister, so I have a feeling there may have been some unfortunate anti-bias in play there.
Unfortunately, since I was just filling in on a team, my team (team Because Boat Race) didn't get the point credited. This didn't make any difference later on in the tournament as will be seen later, but was still an irritation.
Round 2 I was iron-manning (the term for when one person does an entire team worth of debating) CO that This house would fake it. I got the third again in a heinously misdefined debate. But this is what happens when you let UWS define a motion. Dear sweet squiggly Jesus, they messed that one up.
Since it was such a clusterfuck of a debate, I decided to shrug and make my extension about the sex industry.
On the topic of UWS, before each round they would psych each other up with a bit of chanting. The words 'not a TAFE' were mentioned. Oh yes, that happenned.
Round 3 I iron-manned again. By this point I was on (officially) one point after two rounds, which is dismal as all get-out, and so I was in the depths of the bin rooms. To add insult to injury, the topic was that This house would let Gotham burn. Needless to say, I had not seen any of the Batman films. Unsurprisingly, given the calibre of the room (two UWS teams along with some random first years from Monash - a bit of a surprise seeing as Monash is usually rather legit at debating) I got the first, which was basically the story of this meme:
Day two and round 4 I had a substitute teammate: Adam M, who was supposed to be debating with Sarah F (one of my teammates from nationals) who was sick on the weekend. We were OO on the motion that This house would take no prisoners. We got the second, and must have done alright with regard to speaks, because round five was the round of death.
It was the round of death because despite the fact that my team only had three rounds of points, we were at the top of the 6 point bracket (nice work on the speaks, Adela), and were thus pulled up into the 7 point bracket. Which was really really bad. For me. Because I was against a whole bunch of scary excellent debaters who had all been debating for ages and had all garnered much success during their debating careers. We're talking top speakers at Worlds kind of success.
Add into this the fact that I was OG and thus actually had to set up the debate, and the fact that I was again iron-manning. I may or may not have spent the first 10 minutes of the 15 minute prep pacing around the room, swearing to myself.
The motion was that This house celebrates the rise of Fifty Shades of Grey. It didn't go well. At all.
I cringe at the memory.
Although I do thank Parker, from team Scary Cabal of Old People (not the actual team name, but that's what it was in reality) for asking a point of clarification. Because when your case is built on a foundation of smoke and mirrors and you're not entirely sure what it is you're arguing, a nice point of clarification can help sort shit out. Of course I still donutted hard.
By the time the semis and the final were on, I was so exhausted I thought it would be a good idea to do a Physics quiz (rookie error; I was clearly not a rational actor at the time). Of course, I can be smug in the knowledge that on aggregate speaker points, I was the best speaker of the tournament.
Is this because I did three more speeches than everyone else? Perhaps.
I regret nothing.
