IT'S BEEN WAY TOO LONG.

Warning: This post shall be extremely poorly written.

No, no, no, don't be expecting my usual super-long posts. I kind of just wanted to VERY BRIEFLY update ya'll with my life as of now since the last time I REALLY posted, which was....shit. The last time I made a legit post was in July.

....Awks.

Annnnnyway. Here goes.

September -- I started school at that smart-people school that I got accepted into. We need to give that school a name, cause I'll be mentioning it a lot...How about NYC Science? If you live in New York City, you're probably laughing right now, and can probably immediately guess the name of my school. Hehe. Any guesses?
Shameless Promotion of My School:
   . Number one high school speech & debate team IN AMERICA. WHOOO.
   . If you obsessively watch the show Everybody Hates Chris, you'd know that Greg and Chris both applied to my school, but only Greg got in.
   . We have had the most alumni to receive Nobel Prizes -- more than any high school in America :)

Wow okay, I'm already kind of sick of promoting my school....

MOVING ON.

So September, I started school there. I found out that my past life of over 100 averages was far gone, and I could barely keep my average over a 90.

A 90. I can't even get a fucking 90. Do you know what my average is right now? An 89. Like. Whattafuck. Everyone is telling me to transfer out of my smart school and go to a normal school where I'll get good grades by working less. But but but. I don't know. I really like my school. So many fricken' geniuses all together. It's kind of...amazing? And we have so many opportunities at my school, and we always have Ivy League University recruits coming to our school and laughing with our students, so I feel like I'd be throwing away a HUGE blessing.


Rant over.

So how about some pictures of awesome students from school?

Senior Guys are just...so amazing.

This is the "Shirtless Guy" Club at my school. I'm not even joking. I don't even know what they do during their Weekly meetings.

Their shirts say "Seniors Run On Freshman" :D (This was for Freshman Friday)

According to this lovely diagram, "Seniors Rule The World," Freshmeat - I mean Freshman - are banished to a small island.

The "O" in "Senior" is our school logo. Cause it's NYC Science. Yeah.

Such awkward people, I can't even...

ASIANS!

THE WORK OF ASIANS!

The front of my school.

Halloween costume of my friend 

Seniors on Halloween all dressed as Gingerbread men having a wrestling match in front of the ice cream truck after school...

More "Shirtless Guy" Club....

Our "Urban Dance" Club performing in the cafeteria

Hehe. All taken from Facebook.

I believe I told you guys that I joined the Speech&Debate team at my school, right? Yeah, I joined Debate -- or more specifically, Policy Debate (There's also Lincoln Douglass Debate, Public Forum Debate, Congressional Debate, and more. But Policy Debate is the ORIGINAL debate -- created before any of the others).

POLICY DEBATE IS SO MUCH FUN. I mean, it's hard work and it takes practice and it takes thinking and it's a bit expensive at times and it's hard when you lose but OH MY GOD. SO FUN.

Is anyone here in Policy Debate? If you are, you're going to love it when I say : Policy Debate kicks aff and is the CXiest form of debate out there. Mwahahahaha. No one got that? Alright, I guess everyone thinks I'm weird.

^_^

SO my school is kind of like...feared in terms of debate. When people get the schematics at a tournament and find out that their first round is with NYC Science, they freak and go find their Varsity Directors or maybe even their Debate Coaches for help.

In October, my school hosted a HUGE, INTENSE Speech&Debate tournament that high schools all across America came to and competed in and had been preparing for months for.. I bet some of your schools even came. I'm not going to mention the name of the tournament, because you could just Google it and then millions of entries of my school would come up. And that's awkward.

Since I'm a novice debater (Someone who's new to debate) and I attend NYC Science, me and the other novices were allowed to watch rounds of some of the best debaters in the country. OH MY GOD THEY WERE SO AMAZING, LIKE I CAN'T IMAGINE EVER BECOMING THAT GOOD. 

Some basic Policy Debate shiz:

   . Policy Debate is done with a partner. 

   . When you're Varsity, it's shameful if you can't speed read -> SPREAD.

   . Every year, the topic for Policy Debate changes. This year, it's 

             Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its exploration and/or development of space beyond the Earth’s mesosphere.

     You had to prepare for both sides of this argument, because you don't get to pick which side you're on during a round. If' you get Aff, that means you support this argument. If you get Neg, you don't support this argument. Pretty straightforward, right?

    . When you read evidence, it's called reading a 'card'

    . The entire round is done facing at your judge. You aren't supposed to be looking at the opposing team. You look at your JUDGE.

Ha. Ha ha. One of the rounds we were watching were between a team of girls vs. a team of guys. 

The Girl Team

Girl 1 seemed soft-spoken and delicate and "Typical-White-Girl" at first, but she was an amazing spreader (Like, she was reading so fast that my little untrained novice ears couldn't catch anything). And she was very good at answering CX (Cross-Examination) questions.

Girl 2 was an aggressive Asian. Didn't quite think things through...

The Guy Team

Guy 1 was super hot. Just wanted to put that out there. And now on to this debating skills...he was SO cocky, and that made me kind of not like him. He was laughing and smiling and rolling his eyes and just seemed so dandy and I wanted to slap the smile off his face.

Guy 2 was nothing of interest. Guy 1's hot-ness distracted me too much.

So Guy 1 was asking questions to Girl 1 during CX. He strolled over to the front and lazily asked her seemingly simple questions but they were actually being fired at her since they were so important.

Guy 1: So how do you know that the Missile Defense system we want to implement will damage the environment? *smiles at judge*

Girl 1 explains thoroughly about some scientific research and stuff and it was very credible and I give her props for that.

Guy 1: *grins* Oh, is it? Do you have any cards for that?

Girl 1: *annoyed by his stupidity* No -- this is basic science. If you've taken any elementary level chemistry class, you'd know this.

The judge and all the novices laughed.

Guy 1: *squinting in annoyance* That is all.

HAHAHA. Am I the only one who found that funny? GODDAMN. YOU PEOPLE NEED TO JOIN POLICY DEBATE SO I WONT LOOK THAT WEIRD LAUGHING BY MYSELF.

Anyway. Here's some pictures from the event. At least you can somewhat find the angry debaters amusing, like I did. None of them taken by me, of course.

d

The girl wearing the pink blazer was Girl 2. Girl 1 is in stripes.

SO MANY PEOPLE IN OUR AUDITORIUM.

SO MANY DEBATERS FRANTICALLY PREPPING ON THEIR LAPTOPS

My first tournament was at my own school. Our Varsity coaches told us not to worry, because compared to others, we were really good. Actually, she didn't say that. She said, "Guys. Novices fucking suck. Don't worry." There were three rounds at the first tournament.

1st Round -- We were Aff. Two hicktown white boys, one of which desperately needed a haircut. They were so terrible. They didn't even bring papers to flow on ("Flowing" is basically debate lingo for "taking notes" in like, this chart-like way). THEY DIDN'T EVEN BRING A PEN! They asked us for one, so I gave them a yellow highlighter. Snicker, snicker. Yeah, so they were terrible and I actually laughed at them in the middle of our round (Sorry, guys..) BUT SOMEHOW. OUR JUDGE VOTED FOR THEM. LIKE. NO. WHAT THE HELL. Our coach told us not to worry since Novice tournaments always have bullshit judges, but...asgdhdgfawhgfhsgdfgshfgdsgksd.

2nd Round -- We were Neg. We creamed them. We creamed them so badly. And it felt so good. We made all their plans look ridiculous. And we beat them on TOPICALITY, which is like impossible to beat someone with (Topicality is a tricky way to beat a team, because you're basically saying that the opposing team's plan is untopical -- it doesn't relate to the Resolution.) Their plan was to send something down to Earth from space or some shit like that. My partner and I argued that their plan was untopical because we weren't increasing exploration or development of space beyond the Earth's mesosphere -- we were sending things back down to Earth. That's not the point of the Resolution.
Haha. One of them was SO BAD at CX. He asked me since one of our arguments against developing in space was that if we increase space development, China will think we are trying to compete with them, which could ultimately lead to economic collaspe ---> nuclear war ---> extinction, he asked "How do you know China is a country?"
I'm like ....
My partner and I looked at each other in amusement, and then I looked at our judge (SUPER HOT JUDGE) and raised my eyebrows. He laughed and shrugged his shoulders, telling us to just disregard the stupidity standing in front of me.
We won that one. Obvvvvviously. Our judge said we were amazing, and that he thought we were varsity. I was like :D

3rd Round: We were Aff. Hardest one of the day. Two bitchy girls who hated my partner because she is SO BEAST at CX. Like, she terminates. It's a bit insane. They had some skill....but hah. Not enough.

Final Results : 7th Place Team Award (Which is really good, when there's like 100 + Policy Debaters). We got medals. AWWWWYEAHHH.

Second tournament was at some school in upstate NY. The whole bus ride there, since all of us live in NYC, our debate coach was cracking jokes about how we were going to the most exciting town in Ny....and it really wasn't. It was so tiny and plain and suburban and blah. I felt awkward laughing at the jokes, since most of my life I'VE lived in towns like those myself....

1st Round: We were Neg, up against two older guys who claimed to be novices. Mhmm -_- They were really good...During one of my speeches, one dude came up behind me right next to my face to see what I was reading (Its allowed) and I was caught off guard, so I was like, "Um. Hi." And he was like, "Hey." And I was like AWKS and I went back to reading.
At the end, one of the guys asked me for a hug. He was also Mexican. He was also intimidating. He was also pretty sleazy looking. I gave him a hug.

....

2nd Round: We were Aff. Our opposing team was a Mexican guy + Black girl. WE WERE SO CRUSHED. The girl argued like we were in a streetfight. Ajsdsgksdf. Very annoying round.

3rd Round: We were Aff. We went up against two girls from my brother's school, which is THE TOP HIGH SCHOOL in New York City, and higher ranking than us in the Top 24 High Schools of America. Needless to say, we're rivals. Luckily, their. Debate. Novices. Suck. So. Bad. Our Novice directors were like, "Don't worry, you'll beat their asses, that school's novices don't know shit" and we were still scared. But as soon as I  started the round and read my speech and they began CXing me, I was like

-grin-

They were just that bad. So like, we crushed them. Hehehe.

No medals for us at that tournament, because were only 1-2. But all the Policy debaters (novice + varsity) went to some Chipotle in the middle of Manhattan when we came back. HELL YEAH.

Third tournament was in NJ. THE BEST TOURNAMENT MY PARTNER AND I HAVE HAD SO FAR IN OUR SHORT-LIVED DEBATE LIFE.

1st Round -- We were Neg. Two ghetto black guys. One was JV and one was a novice. Before the round starts, you're allowed to ask the other team what their plan is. Their plan was some really weird case about stopping racism and cooperation among countries to help this happen? SOMTHIN' LIKE DAT. We had absolutely no idea how to run against this case, so we found our novice director and asked her for help. So she flashed us a document onto our laptop and said, "READ THIS. THIS HAS EVERYTHING YOU NEED. Even if you don't understand this, just read it."

The round started. They gave their speech. I clicked on the document to open it. And then, "This file is corrupted and cannot be opened."

AKJGDAJKGSDJHDASHfdHAWDHWFDJWHFAEHDQWFEQDHJGFEAYGDFQJA.

^ My thoughts at that moment.

Literally, we had ABSOLUTELY no evidence against their case. It was so depressing. And you know what we did? Would you like to know what we did?

We fucking winged it.


That's right.

We winged it, we made information up, and WE WON.


We attacked everything about their plan. We won on topicality (Again, topicality is so impossible), we won on the fact that the impacts of implementing their plan were far worse than the impacts of NOT implementing their plan, which made our case look awesome. Tee hee.

2nd Round -- HA. Two suckers. We were Neg. It was beautiful. I was getting so animated, and I was explaining how if we send anything else up into space, it causes a collison cascade that ultimately leads to nuclear war with Russia (it's a long story). My last words were, "...and it causes nuclear war" and I kind of did these weird animated sprinkling motions with my hands, and that's when I knew the elderly judge thought I was adorable and I walked back to my partner and sat down and said, "We won."

And we were only halfway through the round.

3rd Round -- We were Aff. The two girls were annoying. We won. End of story.

4th Round -- We were Neg. This, by far, was probably the hardest and most interesting round I've ever debated. We were up against two slutty girls who seemed older than us, and walked into the room with these smug looks on their faces like, "We is so going to win." We talked to them a bit before the round started and found out that THEY HAVE BEEN DEBATING FOR THREE YEARS.

"Are you serious?!" I asked. "Three years?"


"Yeah. How about you guys?"

I look at my partner. "This is our third tournament. Ever. In our lives."

Other girl's face is like >:-)

The round started. Like I said, it was the fricken' hardest round we've ever done, especially since they were way more experienced than us. Also, their plan had almost no flaws to it, so it was really hard for us to make it look bad and show the judge why their plan sucks.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention: OUR JUDGE WAS SOOO HOT. And he was only a few years older than us, as I found out after the round was over.

ANYWAYY. So like, I gave the very last speech for Neg (which is also the most important one for Neg). And I was so nervous and freaked and I was like telling myself, "It's okay to lose. You know you lost. Stop trying." And yet, I made it the most passionate, intelligent Neg speech that I have ever delivered, and ignored the other team's obvious rudeness like when they were cursing under their breaths or rolling their eyes. I CONTINUED MY AWESOME SPEECH. Like, damn. I still can't even believe I did that...

Still, when I was done, I sat down next to my partner and said, "Yo."

She turns around. "Hm?"

"We're fucked."

-sadfaces-

Next up, the Aff gave their own last speech. Honestly, I thought it was really good. So good, that my partner and I sadly began packing our papers as the judge started talking.

"So guys, this was a really good, close round. There were lots of strong arguments made, and my flows are really organized, which is a pleasant surprise."

Partner and I continue packing sadly.

"But overall, I chose Neg from NYCScience..."

O________O

Partner and I snap our heads up. Legit, the first thought that came to my head was, He chose Neg? Then I guess we must be Aff...


Partner is in such shock that she asks, "Wait, we're Neg?"

And then the judge continues and starts talking about how good we were and comments on all the good things we did and my partner and I on the inside are just like



But on the outside, we're all like




And then the judge said, "The Neg's last speech was the best speech of the entire round. It answered all the major arguments and ..."

I really didn't hear the rest cause I was too busy smiling like



And he gave me the IMPOSSIBLE SPEAKER POINT OF 29. WHICH IS FRICKEN' IMPOSSIBLE TO GET. (The highest is 30, and the highest I've heard of a novice getting is 29.5)

SO LIKE. YEAH. I WAS PRETTY HAPPY.

Soon after, they gave out the awards in the auditorium. First, they announced Individual Speaker Awards. I was like, "Whatever, I'm never good enough to get Speaker Awards, I always get Team Awards."

BUT THEN. THE FIRST ONE THEY CALLED WAS ME. 10th PLACE OUT OF 100 +.

AKJSGDHGHDFSHDGSFdjhfdjhsHDAJSDHAHSFDhsd.

Medals <3

My partner got 6th place. Daaaaayummmm.

And then they did Team Awards. My partner and I were listening and listening and listening and waiting for our names...they passed 15th place, then 12th, then 10th, then 8th, then 7th, and when they got to 5th place, my partner and I sat down and concluded that we weren't getting anything.

BUT HOLY SHIT GUYS.

WE GOT. SECOND PLACE.

LIKE. HOLY....I CAN'T EVEN...AKJGSDG.

WHAT AN AMAZING NIGHT AND AN AMAZING FEELING.

The bus ride back to Manhattan was amazing and festive and just felt all around good. And then from Manhattan, our group got smaller as people went their separate ways. BUT WHAT AN AWESOME NIGHT, LIKE....WOW.

Annyway. Our fourth tournament was the most recent. UGH. So stupid. We were having it at a REALLY BEAUTIFUL private school in Manhattan (There was a couch in the bathroom. I swear) , but they made all the Policy Debaters compete in the school gym.


-________________________________-

In about an hour, all of our laptops died, and we were all freaking out because there was no power outlet to charge it. And all of our evidence was on the computer.

Long story short, we managed some way or the other. Meh.

1st Round -- We had to go up against our own team members. So fricken strange, since we knew exactly what the others' plan was. The reason for this was because there were so many competitors from NYCScience that we were paired up with each other. We were Aff. And we won.

2nd Round -- Up against my brother's school, two Asian dudes. We were Neg. WE MADE THEM LOOK LIKE LITTLE CHILDREN. But...somehow we lost. Even though that was, without a doubt, our fricken' BEST round of the entire tournament.

3rd Round -- My brother's school again, two Asian girls. We were Neg. It was a total phail for them. We won. Hah.

Results -- We got 2-1. We got a Team Award. Whoop-de-doo.

SO LIKE. I still have a lot that I want to talk about on this post. I mean, it's been SO long...but I feel like I'm boring you all with debate stuff, SO BYE FOR NOW.


:)

Ha. Who still reads this blog? This blog is dead.