How to improve on a team with a strong generalist

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vathreya
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How to improve on a team with a strong generalist

Post by vathreya »

Hi all (I'm posting this on behalf of another community member who is in high school),

How do you motivate yourself to become a good specialist on a team which already has an elite generalist? Let's say you're already very familiar with the high school canon in your subject, but can't seem to make much of an impact on your team given that you're overwhelmingly shadowed by a very strong generalist who can get good buzzes and PPB's across the board in most categories up to and including easy college difficulty. The question, then, is how do you improve yourself enough to make a more significant impact on your team?

What's the strategy here? Do you just try your best to plug in your team's (few) holes and forego your subject(s)? Do you just have to "study up" and work your way up to a higher difficulty (like easy college or college regs) in your specialty? Or is there a third way to improve? If so, how do you motivate yourself to improve and avoid complacency, and what are some strategies to do so?

Thanks in advance for your advice!
Vikshar Athreya
UW'22
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Skepticism and Animal Feed
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Re: How to improve on a team with a strong generalist

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

Learning the categories that your team struggles with is not only a great way to increase your PPG, it is also a great way to win the gratitude of your teammates. Whether you just notice that tossups on subject x always go dead at practice, or you actually talk to your teammates and figure out which categories they hate and don't want to study, I strongly recommend learning your teams weak points as a way of both self-improvement and good teammateship [sic?].

There's no need to abandon your subjects. Presumably, you are a specialist in x because you enjoy learning about x, are good at learning clues about x, or both. If you deny it to yourself you are denying yourself pleasure and easy points. The harder the questions get, the more valuable a specialist with deep knowledge becomes. As a college freshman and sophomore I played on multiple teams with Andrew Yaphe, who is possibly the greatest player in the history of quizbowl and could buzz on all subjects, and on harder question sets I was still able to beat him to tossups in my specialty area, in some cases getting powers where he would have just gotten a 10. I was also able to contribute third bonus part answers that he didn't know.
Bruce
Harvard '10 / UChicago '07 / Roycemore School '04
ACF Member emeritus
My guide to using Wikipedia as a question source
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