This is how my lovely day at History Debating and Hurlstone progressed, however dear readers, I must caution you: COLOURFUL LANGUAGE (and a certain uncharacteristic bitchiness) will most likely ensue. This will be long, as I will go into extreme and gory detail.
How am I feeling at the moment? So demoralised like Japan without its Emperor Hirohito.
How did my day begin? Excellently, actually. How did it end? Disastrously.
This morning I woke up with nothing but victory and success on my mind I was breezing through the morning singing “V-I-C, V-I-C, V-I-C-T-O-R-Y! Victory! Victory is our cry!” Despite the fact that I had a grand total of three hours of sleep and arose bleary-eyed like corey worthington with a hangover (I do despise this bloke SO MUCH and how he besmirches the name of teenagers everywhere – he doesn’t deserve capitalisation!!) I had showered and dressed immaculately, gathered my hair in a French Twist and did my make up perfectly. I was like a glimmering stallion on race day – I was Makybe Diva at the Melbourne Cup. Although we had to be at Westmead at an ungodly hour and I had an obscene amount of coins weighing my purse I was like –yeah! We can do this! We’re prepared! Evidently I was optimistic and continued to be optimistic all the way down to Hurlstone Agricultural in freaking Glenfield which is literally out in whoop-whoop land – I had never been in that direction, it was like we required a passport just to traverse there.
Anyway, we stepped off the train and suddenly there’s like this herd (pardon the pun) of Hurlstone students exiting the train. It was like Marist and McAuley at Westmead station only exemplified because Glenfield is about the size of a peanut. There was literally this exodus of students inundating the stairs and we had to walk up their asphalt pathway (does not compare to King’s at all! I’d rather almost tripping on the grass any day!) bypassing these bizarre archaic agricultural instruments on the way to their main office – which mind you was like a mission to get to. Thank God for the invention of signs and the very hospitable students. Quite frankly, despite the relatively dodgy state of their school, the students were very magnanimous and hospitable and apparently according to their office trophy-case, excellent horse breeders. O_O
Omitting all the tedious formalities, here we are at 9:25am, T-minus five minutes to total destruction. I swear I think Hurlstone had an intimidation tactic up their sleeve, they sent students as spectators and the year ten history classes to watch. So quite literally we were so engulfed with Hurlstone I felt like a bloody reject (once again, I am comfortable at King’s another reason why our expatriation off to whoop-whoop land was so unjustified). The only thing that calmed me down at that point was quite frankly a marvellous conversation with the time-keeper about Dostoevsky. (Ok how much of an ENGLISH NERD did I sound like just then – I was calmed down by discussing Russian Literature. Gosh, deeh, you are unbelievable). In short: we lost.
Ok, now here is the part when I become really bitchy and rant, and I apologise for any colourful language or enraged assertions I will make at this point, but that loss was poignant to me I wanted to literally shove my pen up my nose and bang my head on the table like that girl in Japan who did it with a pencil as she was unable to handle the pressure. We lost upon the stupidest reason – I swear to God that senile adjudicator, John Roe needs to just walk off a cliff or something or re-educate himself on how to adjudicate correctly – we lost on TECHNICALITY. Because we spoke OVERTIME. I’ll take that into consideration, however when you look upon the debate as a whole, we totally kicked their ass. It was so bleeding obvious that we lucidly had won, our arguments were thoroughly (PAINSTAKINGLY) researched – literally we left no stone unturned. Our arguments were titanium steel – our refutations were flawless we spent SIX WEEKS on that debate. We went to the State Library!!! We had expected the team to have a good quality argument. Instead, their argument was so poorly researched and NOT SUBSTATNTIATED may I add (No use of historians or historical facts – pure assertion!) Their refutations consisted primarily of speculation and their arguments were all over the place. Their third speaker was horrible! He stuttered and lost his place and confused his palm cards and said nothing of substantial matter. Then you have Libby who TORE DOWN their case like it was a discarded catalogue left out on a wet day. Literally she shredded them to pieces (we all did) as their arguments were so basic it was laughable (lol but we did employ the strategy of pretending to verse a team of Vales here, and the Hurlstone team did not even compare). And yet we lost on the bullshit reason that we spoke too long and that the other team didn’t. Well, the only reason why they didn’t is because they had no argument or research to fill the time! We went over time because we were so prepared. I swear we annihilated them like the tanks of Tiananmen Square!
What absolutely shits me is that they didn’t even know what side they were on! That ignoramus of an adjudicator said “which is why I give it to the affirmative” and they’re like – what? Is that us? God, I wanted to shoot her. Violent intentions aside, I was so demoralised and shattered. Literally my pride and dignity was so shattered it was all over the floor. This was our fundamental debate. We knew that no matter what happens – no matter if we lost the other two the Japan one would be our definite win because we were so meticulous and prepared. But no we lost on the (excuse me) fucking bullshit basis of time constraints. Everyone – including ALL the Hurlstone spectators and history students had approached us saying that we should have won. The chairperson and time keeper said that we should have won – they even made little arrows on their notes saying “They’re going to win.” The Hurlstone team, the opposition themselves and their friends approached us saying that we should have won – everyone in that room except for stupid John Roe! He was telling us why we lost and everything with his black scarf around his neck with the label “cashmere” emblazoned on the front and all I wanted to do was grab it and strangle him with it! He can just die by a cashmere noose! That’s a dignified death for you!
Anyway, so there was our team and school pride lying in tatters and all I wanted to was bloody commit suicide by shooting myself in the uterus! I was demoralised I did not care anymore. That utter loss, gosh, I wanted to commit seppuku and hara-kiri myself like the Japanese War General Anami after he signed the surrender. Usually I can take defeat, I’m fine with defeat because usually I can say okay “This is where we went wrong, this is why we lost, I know why we lost” and I am able to fault myself, but this, this is just – urgh there are no words. We all agree as a team, that such a travesty would not have occurred at King’s. There they base their adjudication upon historical matter, not freaking time constraints! I am lodging an appeal! (*ahem*)
Then there was a short recess where in which we licked our wounds in a spectacularly bitchy fashion. Hurlstone had these lovely apple crumble pieces however, once again, they do not compare to the delightful assortment of fruit and those indulgent chocolate muffin things King’s has. One of these days, I will commit other acts of espionage and steal the recipe from their kitchens. *devious look* In short we didn’t care about the contemporary historical film one, having had our pride utterly destroyed as though it were the twin towers and we were defeated again to William Clarke. Now whatever pride I had managed to salvage off the proverbial floor was completely eradicated then as we lost to this newbie school whom of which had never debated before. It cuts me that I was a semi-finalist, Libby is a debating machine and Stef had done this before, and Greta was a good public speaker we were the McAuley dream team and we lost on the basis of ONE LINE. We lost on the fact that we failed to refute this one sentence. But I could tell that the debate was EXTREMELY close though because the two adjudicators took quite literally, half an hour to decide. All the while waiting I wanted to jump out the window or shoot myself in the uterus.
But the girls from William Clarke were really nice, very polite and delightful women and approached us saying that we should have won despite that they were also challenging. Once again, the adjudication was ludicrous. I honestly do wish them luck in their future debates as they were so kind and approachable. LOL they said that didn’t know how to refute because of our extended vocabulary and internally I was rejoicing because I was like “Yep! That was the intention!” I harnessed my English-prowess! Yet again I was bleeding on the crags of defeat. Last night my parents recognised my stress and offered me sauvignon blanc. LOL! I wanted that sauvignon blanc at that very moment. It was like history debating version of Sophie Delezio’s life story. First we were burned and suffered and annihilated into critical condition and then WHAM! CAR CRASH! Like a double-whammy, kick ‘em while their down, utter humiliating situation. But we soldiered on into the final debate.
By that time we were utterly exhausted like you don’t understand. We were so incomprehensibly wrung out that I just wanted to cry and go home. But we won. How funny is that? But I did have THE BIGGEST HEART ATTACK OF MY LIFE when Greta accidentally switched the allocation and I thought that she was saying my arguments and that we had the exact same speech. It turns out she didn’t, but for a minute during the debate I think my heart stopped beating, and suicide was just a pen away. We ended on a positive note however. Dammit, I wanted to make the quarters and semi’s!! I was in it to WIN IT this year, it’s the only reason why I sacrificed my sanity and eye-sight and endured the unending masses of bullshit and illness. Seriously as soon as I arrived home I changed and collapsed onto my bed, and when I woke up I had a chest infection (and still do) so bad that it HURTS TO BREATHE. I am so ill from receiving an average of 3 hours sleep every night that I can feel the pain radiating in every single one of my alveoli. (lol, year 8 science)
What an inexorably shit-arse day. Please, excuse my language. Anyway I bought my comfort food and slowly ate my way into an msg-related death, I went shopping, not that that’s relevant and slept. Thus the highlight of my day. I want to retreat into a hole and cosy up with my Dostoevsky. Although it was very interesting to see how everyone dealt with their grief, in a totally unethical ambitious science project sort of way, it was interesting to witness our grieving process. There was Greta who comforted everyone and distracted herself, Stefanie who rattled on about needing 500kg of Oolong tea to calm her down, Libby had a quiet yet mournful shroud enveloping her with a dark ambience and I, I had my anger and violent intentions like the fiery Aries that I am (not that I believe in superstition anyway). The train ride home had been eventful though, it was an ultimate bitchfest (to be frank) about the injustices of John Roe!
Gosh, okay I didn’t know how bitchy this blog was. My sincerest apologies but venting was in order. I will now proceed to rummage through the pantry for chocolate as I salvage my dignity from charred ruins of our history debating failure.
On a positive note, I won’t to work myself into exhaustion anymore. :) Now I can focus on my Modern historical Investigation and my Extension English seminar.... oh joy. LOL.
I SINCERELY HOPE THAT YOUR DAY WAS BETTER THAN MINE.
P.S There was a hilarious occasion though when halfway through Libby’s refutation she inserted an inside joke and simultaneously we cracked up so hard. Although silently of course. We crying and shaking in our seats in effort to contain ourselves and our laughter. I swear I hadn’t laughed so hard since Dyanne made that joke about Brendan Nelson during Rudd’s sorry speech.
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