Michael Davies said: <<"If you're scoring 5 points a game your first year, you're not going to get past 12 points a game unless you write a LOT of questions and carry around a notebook when you play so you can write things down you want to remember (e.g. "MAGGIE TULLIVER ---> MILL ON THE FLOSS").>> OK, that's it, I was going to wait until I had all of my thoughts organized, but I need to respond. It is OK if you DO NOT WANT TO CARRY A NOTEBOOK! It is not just "say you, say Mead" when it comes to quiz bowl. There are dozens of ways to improve, notebooks are one of a wide array of options, and certainly many of your other choices are less obsessive and less time consuming. I am more than a little certain that a goodly majority of our playing community is carrying a full load in terms of course work, or course work and teaching assignments. As such, I am pretty sure that they have a lot of higher priority things to worry about than memorizing quiz bowl clues that they have obsessively and hastily copied down in a notebook (I don't care about the writing as memory activation technique research that exists.) If you want to do it, fine, I am sure you will improve as a player and I am sure you will feel better for it, but don't tell people it's the only way to improve. Quite simply, there is no one path to getting better as a player. Listen to everyone's opinions and do what works, it's like almost anything else in life. Oh, and if you don't want to do anything to improve, that's cool too, because it's likely that you won't complain about it here, you won't be reading this post, and you'll probably think that we are all a bunch of stark-raving loons who need help, and well, you would probably be right and would be saving yourself several hours a day reading the pontifications of "an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals." I'll have much more to say about this entire topic, but for now, I just had to vent that. (Oh, and by the way, I went from 20 ppg to 50 ppg between my first two years and the only thing I have ever used a notebook for was keeping score and writing down comedy notes, so not, it's not the only way you're gonna get past 12 ppg.) Craig D. Barker Michigan, BA `00-History Marygrove College, MAT `03--Secondary Education (Not speaking on behalf of any program, organization, or group of which I am a known affiliate.)
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