Getting better

[theMoMA]

Like everyone who takes this game seriously, I've had a long and sometimes frustrating relationship with improvement. Many like to ask for tips for getting better at various categories, implying that there's some method that works particularly well for learning chemistry or poetry or history or architecture. I'm here to say three things about the quest for improvement.

1) There isn't an easy way to get good at quizbowl or any particular category of quizbowl. Improving at this game is the same as setting any kind of goal. It requires hard work, success often comes in increments, and there are no shortcuts around the heavy lifting...

2) ...except this. The truly great players don't have some kind of miracle system for studying, and they don't learn things that much better or more thoroughly than the rest of us. They just enjoy it more. Think about how much you'd learn if learning were the thing you defaulted to when you were killing time. If you really want to learn something, learn to love it first. Listen to classical music, analyze poems, take a chemistry class, talk to a physicist. Do whatever it takes for you to enjoy learning whatever you want to learn about! Most important is a love for reading, since that's what you're going to have to do to learn about almost anything. The secret is that getting good at quizbowl is hard work, unless it's not work at all.

3) Like quizbowl and your friends. Getting really good at quizbowl takes up a lot of your time. You'd better like it. The more fun quizbowl is, the better you'll want to do, and the better you do, the more fun it is. The people you're with are the ones you're going spend that quizbowl time with, so you'd better like them too. Success in quizbowl is almost never purely individual. Your teammates matter a lot. You should probably like each other.

In sum: Getting better at quizbowl is difficult. Consequently, the best players like quizbowl, they like the things that come up in quizbowl, and they like the people with whom they play quizbowl.

That's why I have a hard time understanding the usefulness of these threads that pop up every so often, in which someone asks how to get better at science, or philosophy, or painting, or whatever. We all should know that there's no miracle system. Improvement at quizbowl is just like any long-term goal, yet a lot of us are looking for the quizbowl equivalent of the Tip a Local Mom Used to Lose 15 Pounds of Belly Fat! (minus the credit card fraud).

I'm here to say that there are two options for Getting Better at [Blank]. You can do what I've outlined above, or you can use whatever method works best for you to systematically memorize things that come up in that area of the distribution. That's it. There isn't another way to do it. The answer to every "how do I learn [blank]" inquiry is the same. Kindle legitimate academic interests, or memorize. You can certainly combine the two to great effect. And I'm not here to say that memorizing doesn't work or shouldn't be done. For me, it's not as fun or fulfilling, and I suspect many agree with that sentiment. But we've all tried it and we all know it gets you points.

Anyway, I don't mind when people ask for good sources for info or clues. And I certainly don't mind people asking for suggestions about what's interesting or worth learning about. Or even if they want ideas for taking on the unique challenges of learning certain topics, like understanding poetry or reading mathematical equations, etc. But can we please stop this whole "how do I get good at [blank]" stuff? The answer is always the same: Learn it, one way or the other.