Well, this has been an exciting weekend. Let me describe...

The debate tournament was at Johns Hopkins, which is a pretty campus in a pretty sketchy area (as far as I could tell from the various armed robbery warnings posted around campus). The drive there was supposed to take about six hours--with traffic, however, we were in the car for nine hours. Starting at 6:30 in the morning. Which, for those not familiar for the college student's sleep cycle, is approximately equivalent to 3:30 in the morning for a normal person. However, people were in a relatively good mood, so the drive really wasn't that bad. AND the debate team funded our meals on the way there, so I got a free Cinnabon and coffee (score!).

The tournament itself was great. They didn't segregate varsity and novice debaters, so our first round was against a team with at least one member who had been debating for four years on that circuit. We lost, but not badly. My partner was (unfortunately) not any better than I was, despite a year of technically being a member of the debate team; I had to write all three of our cases, so she didn't really understand what points we had to make. We ended up with a record of 1 win and 4 losses--not embarassingly bad for my first tournament, but a record that I'd really like to improve on!

The guy whose room me and my partner stayed in was probably the most compelling proof I've ever seen against freshman-only dorms. He had apparently been going out and drinking heavily every night since his arrival on campus, and that night was no exception. Despite the fact that we had to be at breakfast before nine the next morning (and then debate!), he didn't come back to his room until about 2:30 in the morning, at which point he was vomiting all over. After cleaning up, he finally went to sleep, and we got to try to sleep on his floor--until he vomited in his sleep at 4:30 and then argued loudly with the RA about whether or not she needed to call in medical people. He lost. Finally, when the medical people actually arrived to examine him, somebody thought to offer us another place to sleep.
The moral of this story: FROSH ARE STUPID. Our sketchiest party dorm doesn't have kids doing that.

But despite the lack of sleep, our team as a whole did pretty well. Our fearless leaders, a senior girlfriend-boyfriend team, broke to semifinals and probably should have broken to finals. I apparently got the ninth highest novice speaking score, which (while not terribly impressive) at least gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside. And we got to listen to They Might Be Giants and Les Mis on the way back. So all in all, the tournament was a tremendous success. I'm going again next weekend--yay Smith!