Expa

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The Blind Prophet
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Re: Expa

Post by The Blind Prophet »

I think it depends on what you enjoy learning about. If you enjoy learning about history or science, go ahead and study it. If, however, you don't enjoy learning about it and find it boring, then stick to lit. You'll retain information much better if you learn things you're interested in.
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Re: Expa

Post by joshxu »

You are in your last year of middle school, which means that after this year, you will be moving up to high school, where you will have different teammates, and over the years, those teammates will change. At this point in your career, it's too early to simply become a specialist in one category solely because other topics are covered by your teammates. However, if literature is truly your only passion, then it will likely be a better use of your time to master it rather than forcing yourself to learn other subjects that you find boring.
yutid wrote:In MS, it seems like NAQT doesn't pay as much emphasis on literature as it does to history and geography, so I find my number of tossups and powers dwindling.
According to the subject distribution charts I found on naqt.com, NAQT's middle school literature distribution is smaller than and its history distribution is larger than their respective high school distributions. However, this should not be too much of a concern, since you will soon be moving up to high school.

Additionally, your teammate Ethan posted a similar question, except in history instead of literature. Maybe this thread can help...: http://www.hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewto ... 17&t=21516
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iarehavethestupid
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Re: Expa

Post by iarehavethestupid »

It seems OP has been removed and Yuti's account has been deleted.

Anybody know what to do? Mods? Did something happen?
Ethan Xu
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Re: Expa

Post by Susan »

Hi, Ethan,

It looks like Yuti edited her original post in a way that changed its meaning (possibly in an attempt to respond to the thread), which is against the forum rules. A board staff member disapproved this post because of the rule violation, encouraging her instead to put her thoughts in a separate post in the thread. The disapproval seems to have resulted in the disappearance of the post. Yuti's account is still active, however, and she is welcome to continue to post in this or any other thread.
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Re: Expa

Post by karstenontheshore »

Jumping back to the content of the post, as a former middle school lit player, I think you may be underestimating the amount of lit questions there are in a game. The NAQT MS lit distribution contains roughly 3.9 llt per packet. If you stick with humanities and do all of the lit distribution as well as fine arts and philosophy, that's roughly six questions per game. If you choose to neglect kid's lit (which I did last year), you have 5 questions per game. If you study enough, especially on MS sets, you should be able to power all five. On expanding, if your team has a science or history player, you may want to ask them about their study plans before expanding into their subjects. Advice for MS quizbowl in general, esp. as someone who started NAQT MS last year, there's a much more finite number of answerlines in MS. If your team studies reasonably, the canon is not hard to master.
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Re: Expa

Post by literatureboye »

karsten7814 wrote:Jumping back to the content of the post, as a former middle school lit player, I think you may be underestimating the amount of lit questions there are in a game. The NAQT MS lit distribution contains roughly 3.9 llt per packet. If you stick with humanities and do all of the lit distribution as well as fine arts and philosophy, that's roughly six questions per game. If you choose to neglect kid's lit (which I did last year), you have 5 questions per game. If you study enough, especially on MS sets, you should be able to power all five. On expanding, if your team has a science or history player, you may want to ask them about their study plans before expanding into their subjects. Advice for MS quizbowl in general, esp. as someone who started NAQT MS last year, there's a much more finite number of answerlines in MS. If your team studies reasonably, the canon is not hard to master.
I do agree that middle school literature canon is not hard to learn, but you don't get that many questions per game. Mythology and religion take up a portion of ms's 3.9 lit questions, and with kid lit, leaves 2.2 questions left. http://www.hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewto ... 27#p347327 is a post I made about it in June.
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Re: Expa

Post by iarehavethestupid »

As a your teammate, I will say this:

Frankly, if you're going to expand, you can't get annoyed that other people might.
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Re: Expa

Post by yutid »

We are a TEAM. If I did expand (I am not saying I will; I rather like my category), I would want to choose something that the team is weak at, and something that no one is taking the initiative to study for. Remember, in my original post I did say "parts of history or science. If you feel that expanding your categories would help the team rather than hinder or do nothing at all, I would recommend you to go for it. I, personally, wouldn't try to study that something is well-covered or something that a teammate said that they would study.
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Re: Expa

Post by CPiGuy »

For what it's worth, it's often valuable to have multiple team members who can cover each category. "Science" and "history" are extremely broad fields, and having two people on the team who can buzz on them and contribute to bonuses is going to get you a lot of points that having just one person there wouldn't.

You might also want to consider splitting up within those categories -- perhaps someone is more interested in U.S. history while someone else is more interested in world history, or you have a math player who isn't as much of a fan of the rest of the science distro.
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Re: Expa

Post by joshxu »

Skepticism and Animal Feed wrote:You say you're in 8th grade: so if you keep playing quizbowl in high school and college, your teammates will change several times. Areas that might be very well covered by one of your middle school teammates today might turn out to be weak areas for your future teams.

I started my college quizbowl career as pretty much a history-only specialist, and it worked because all of the other categories were covered by a teammate (or two, or three). Then in grad school, suddenly I was on a team where nobody really knew mythology or religion, so I decided to learn those subjects. It didn't just get me more points, it also got me the gratitude of my teammates who no longer sat in frustration while those questions went dead or answered by the other team.

You're too early in your career to let "other people on my team know this" be a factor that is stopping you from expanding.
This is quoted from the thread "To expand or not to expand?". At this point in your careers (i.e. middle school), the fact that a subject is a strength on your present team should not be a reason why you don't expand. As your teammates change (which they undoubtedly will), your team's strengths will also change. If you feel that expanding into any category is going to be a good use of your time (whether or not another teammate expands into the same category and/or said category is already covered), you should go ahead and do it!
CPiGuy wrote:For what it's worth, it's often valuable to have multiple team members who can cover each category. "Science" and "history" are extremely broad fields, and having two people on the team who can buzz on them and contribute to bonuses is going to get you a lot of points that having just one person there wouldn't.
I agree with Conor's point. In fact, three of the four players on my team are primarily history players, but for many history bonus parts we hear, only one of us knows the answer.
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Re: Expa

Post by Joshua Rutsky »

I'm going to add one more thing to this that I haven't heard yet - know WHY you want to expand and study more. Whatever you do in quizbowl, as in life, you should do for the right reasons if you want it to be meaningful. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be able to produce more for your team. As Yuti said upthread, expanding your study into an area that your team is currently weak in fills both your desire to expand AND a team need, and should thus be prioritized over expanding for purely personal reasons. Why? Because QB is a TEAM GAME. It isn't about personal stat lines, and I think that when personal stat lines become a priority, the team suffers for it. Yes, you can be crazy competitive with your peers, but if you are all fighting to get the same tossups, you are going to risk buzzing in earlier and earlier to try to be the one who snags the question, and when one of you misses that tossup, your teammates are going to feel like they are justified in griping at you for being overly aggressive when they "knew" the answer. The legitimacy of that point is debatable, but the ill will it can produce on a team is not.

Others in this thread, people I respect a great deal, have said that studying what others are studying isn't unreasonable, particularly since as a Middle School player you will be changing teams in the future multiple times. That's true, and I don't disagree. What I would say, however, is that it is not the choice that maximizes utility for your team. At that point, it's a question of what you put first--yourself or your team. I think that if you make a commitment to a team, you should put the team first. That said, I think the suggestion of dividing up larger categories like "science" or "history" is a good way to make both parties happy. If you aren't the "history" player, and you want to study history, ask your teammate what area of history they would like you to pick up, so they can concentrate on the areas they are most interested in. Surely in a category that large you can find something for each of you.
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