Manchester, Young Debaters, and Leeds

Hello again everybody! After a predictable delay, I have now found sufficient time in which to write up a brief report of my first debating competition in Manchester two weekends ago. Additionally, as an added bonus, last weekend I judged a regional round of the International Competition for Young Debaters, so I’ll add that into my summary as well. Unfortunately though, I’ve discovered that - unlike Model UN - British Parliamentary debating doesn’t really lend itself well to grand story-telling, so I’ll have to content myself with a broad description of these experiences as a whole as well as some of the logistics of competitive debating.

Beginning with the Manchester IV, my first experience of a competitive debating competition began with actually getting to the competition - that is, traveling to Manchester. Luckily, the Oxford Union reimburses travel costs for its debaters but only so long as they take the least expensive form of transportation, which means that all of us competing had to take the roughly three hour train ride there and back. It also meant that I had to purchase a “Young Person’s Railcard” in order to qualify for the discount that met the criteria for “least expensive form of transportation.”

What a lovely picture of me.

Luckily, I met up with a few other Oxford debaters on their way to the same competition, and everything went smoothly. At least, during the departure from Oxford. During our transfer, we quite literally had to run to catch our next train and just barely made it in as someone held open the door, which was obviously somewhat stressful.

Nonetheless, we eventually made it to Manchester, grabbed some dinner at the high-end dining establishment known as Gemini Take-Away, and the five of us spent the night in a student’s room. Three of us got the floor, including myself. The next night, there were seven people, so things did get slightly crowded. Also, for all the people in the flat as a whole, which included ten or so Oxford debaters as well as our three hosts, there was only one bathroom. Taking a shower required getting up quite early in the morning.

Anyway, the next day, we went down to the University to begin the competition proper. I met my partner, Ryan, for the first time, and we got ready for the first round. To clarify exactly what went on for the next several hours, I present the following detailed summary of British Parliamentary debating:

Honestly, that page right there sums up the essential concept of BP-style debating much more succinctly than I could. To provide a little more information though, motions vary wildly from proposals such as “This House believes that the U.S. media should not report any details about school shootings other than the fact that they happen” to “This House believes that African American civil rights organization should condemn capitalism.” Furthermore, after each round, teams are ranked from 1st to 4th on the basis of “the persuasiveness of their arguments.” At this competition, speeches were seven minutes in length with fifteen minutes of preparation time beforehand, and there were four main rounds. After those four, the “break” is announced, which simply means those teams that proceed onward to compete for a chance in the finals.

Now, I’m certain that you’re curious as to how my partner and I did in terms of rankings, and unfortunately the short answer is not very well at all. We came in fourth place in the first three rounds and in second place in the last. However, I’m not letting this disappoint me hugely much, as it was only my first competition, I still had a good time, it gave me some valuable experience, and - even with our poor performance - we did not come in last place!

Those of us who did not break to the later rounds still stuck around to watch the two Oxford teams that did proceed. Despite both doing a spectacular job (in my opinion), one of the two was eliminated in the quarter-finals and the other in the semi-finals. And thus concluded my journey to Manchester.

Bye Manchester!

Just one weekend later though, I was back in another debating competition - the Chenderit School regional round of the International Competition for Young Debaters - this time as a judge! Although I had judged before at the Oxford Inter-varsity Competition from last term, this was my first experience judging by myself and not as a panel, so it was all very exciting. Furthermore, not only did I have to listen to the debates and rank the teams, but I also had to report my rankings back to the teams and provide thorough justifications for those rankings. That part was slightly terrifying, despite the fact that these debaters were all at least three or four years younger than me. Still, I felt it provided even more valuable insight into the workings of competitive debating, and again - on the whole despite its stressful moments - I really enjoyed it.

Tomorrow, I’ll be traveling to Leeds to act as a “wing” judge (read: assistant judge on a panel), so I’m getting excited for what should be another wonderful experience. Although I am still very much working on getting the hang of BP-debating, I have every confidence that if I keep putting myself out there, attend these sorts of competitions, and involve myself as much as possible, I will eventually improve competitively and I will certainly continue to have a good time.

Survey Development and Debating

It’s been quite a while since my last entry, but I’ve finally found a moment to take a break from my hectic schedule and write out another blog post. I can’t really say when exactly I became so busy; I suppose things have just been happening at a faster pace than previously and I simply lost track of time. By now, I’m already more than halfway through my first year at Oxford, which means that I’m one sixth of the way towards completing my degree. College life sure is passing by quickly.

I found the Harry Potter stairway!

Anyway, I can now finally take the time to let all my readers know precisely what I’ve been up to during this brief hiatus. Predictably, most of it has been work. On a weekly basis, our tutors assign us hundreds of pages in reading, and we crank out roughly six pages of political theory essays as well as several additional pages of economics reading. Not that I’m complaining of course. Both subjects have remained fascinating for me, and tutorials are still an excellent learning opportunity that I look forward to every week.

Books!

As you may recall from the last time I posted, I am currently working on a team of students as consultants for the Oxford City Council in the development of a Quality of Life survey for seven of the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods. Actually, when we first met with our client, we were told that they expected us to both develop and carry out the survey. Specifically, they wanted 1,700 responses on a twenty-page survey that we were to test, refine, and implement within the span of six weeks before Spring Break. Obviously that wasn’t going to happen.

When we brought up our concerns to the client, we were informed that they were already on a fixed time scale due to the parameters of the project that had been approved by the Council (read: bureaucracy). We did, however, manage to meet a compromise in which we have recruited even more students to our team who will actually oversee the process of conducting the survey over the first few weeks of the coming vacation. With this new vision in place, we began work on the project.

Look at that logo. That is a nice logo.

Most of our work thus far has consisted of reviewing the survey that the Oxford City Council had copied from Bristol City Council and eliminating all of the questions that seemed irrelevant to Oxford or to quality of life in general.

Questions like this one.

More excitingly though, just this past Tuesday, we conducted a focus group with members of the target neighborhoods to go over our revised survey and give us their feedback. Much of their feedback concerned the lengthiness and spelling errors of the survey, but we did gain some valuable insight into how people felt about specific questions. Interesting points were brought up such as: how do we distinguish between homelessness and “rooflessness?” Or, should a recipient of public services really be referred to as a “consumer?” Perhaps most importantly though, it very much contributed towards one of my principle goals in signing up for the Student Consultancy: I now have work experience in running a focus group.

Regarding the Oxford Union, the big piece of news that I have is that I will be traveling to Manchester this week to take part in my first ever debating competition! I am quite excited, although also fairly nervous about this opportunity. The competition consists of four rounds (more if we make it to the finals!) of seven minute speeches on motions revealed shortly before each debate. I have continued my attendance at the Oxford Union debating workshops this term - in addition to competing in the internal Debater of the Year competition against some far more experienced peers - so hopefully that will have prepared me well for the challenge that I am soon to face. My train to Manchester departs at 7:13 PM tomorrow.

 I'll just leave this here. See also the 2014 "One Round More"

With respect to other Union affairs, I’ve seen a number of very interesting speakers so far, including Richard Dawkins, the former Director of the NSA General Michael Hayden, former Crown Prince of Iran Reza Pahlavi, and Tea-Party leader Christine “I-am-not-a-witch” O’Donnell. Furthermore, in my capacity as a member of the always exciting Library Committee, I was assigned the duty of preparing the economics purchases list for this term, which is not nearly as dull a task as it sounds.

Ideally, it won’t be too long till my next post, as I hope to write another one in summary of the Manchester IV after this weekend. Of course, other things are happening in my life besides work and extracurriculars; I recently attended a murder mystery dinner party as well as a random Irish dancing event. Those events though are mostly self-explanatory.

Before I go though, yet another mention of Rachel, who was sweet enough to send me Valentine’s Day gifts even while we’re an ocean apart, including a sweater, a bow tie, and chocolates.

Fancy chocolates!!

Collections and Consultancy

After little more than two weeks back at Oxford, I have finally managed to sit down and force myself to type out my first blog entry since returning to school. To those of you eagerly awaiting my next installment since my last post back in November, I most sincerely apologize. But at long last I have now returned with yet another brief update on my life at Oxford.

But first, I should briefly mention the various activities of my Christmas vacation for those amongst my readers who might be interested. The obvious highlights include the numerous holiday festivities: I spent both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my extended family, celebrated New Year’s up at my lake house in Wisconsin with cousins and Rachel, and of course took part in the annual gingerbread-house building ceremony.

For my British readers: this is a very historic American holiday tradition

Delicious food, presents, and joyous times were had by all. In additional to celebrating the holidays, I mostly occupied myself by spending time with Rachel, including meeting her grandparents, catching up with friends, relaxing whenever possible, and eventually studying. Yes, studying over Christmas vacation.

For those of you who have neither familiarized yourselves with the Oxford system nor talked to me enough to hear me complain about it, the prospect of studying over vacation might seem simply ludicrous. Unfortunately, at the beginning of each term at Oxford, students are required to take exams on the material they learned prior to leaving for vacation, presumably to ensure that we don’t forget everything over our six-week breaks and end up failing the year-end tests that actually matter.

And that brings me now to the actual start of my time back here in Oxford, upon which I almost immediately had to take these two exams, called Collections, one in philosophy and one in microeconomics with a length of three hours and two hours fifteen minutes respectively. Furthermore, these tests consisted entirely of free-response and essay style questions, which frankly made me miss filling in the multiple-choice bubbles of my high school days.

Ah, Scantron, how I miss ye.

Predictably, these exams were completely exhausting. And although I certainly won’t announce my results here, I will simply say that they turned out not quite as well as I had hoped going in, better than I expected after finishing, and will certainly help me to score higher next time around. Afterwards, I spent the next couple days doing absolutely nothing; it was wonderful.

However, you might note that earlier I said that I “almost immediately” took these exams upon my return to Oxford. Well, that’s not just because I arrived in advance to give myself a bit of time to settle in, but also because I did in fact have yet another ordeal scheduled shortly beforehand that did in fact take place immediately upon my arrival.

Over the course of my vacation, I was frequently visiting the Oxford Careers Service webpage, waiting to see when they would post the international summer internship opportunities and whether there might be one in Chicago I could snatch up. There was not. Nonetheless, during my time spent on that website, I eventually came to notice another opportunity that the Careers Service was offering the following term: The Student Consultancy.

The Student Consultancy requires its logo to accompany any/all mentions of its name.

This program essentially recruits students, groups them into consultancy teams, and assigns them Oxford small businesses, charities, and like organizations as clients with real-life problems to be solved over the course of term. Ever eager as I am to make myself more employable, particularly in light of the lost Chicago-Oxford internship, I quickly sent in my résumé.

Shortly thereafter, I received a reply stating that I had been advanced to the second application stage, which required me to come to the Careers Service office for an evaluation the day of my arrival. So upon arriving at my room after a nine-hour flight and an hour and a half bus ride, I opened up my suitcases, changed into my suit, and walked on over. Luckily, the evaluation was not incredibly intensive; everyone sat with a group at a table with a summary of a different business problem, we discussed said problem amongst ourselves, and then briefly presented how we would approach the problem to the rest of the assembled applicants.

Fortunately enough, I succeeded past the second stage as well, and I began my work with The Student Consultancy. Within two weeks, I have undergone some minor consultancy training, been assigned my first-choice project with the Oxford City Council with three other students, met with the client, and begun to work on a rather intense project. In brief, the Oxford City Council Communities and Neighbourhoods (British spelling is weird) Team has developed a quality of life survey that it wants us to evaluate, refine, and pilot. Although progress has been a bit haphazard so far, things seem to be coming together at this point, and I’m very excited to see how it progresses.

Although I could write plenty more, I believe that’s enough for now, but I will provide a quick synopsis of some of the other things going on with me. This term I’m studying political theory, a bit more microeconomics, and macroeconomics, all of which are quite interesting subjects that I’m enjoying significantly so far. In fact, I have my first macroeconomics lecture this Monday, which I’m very much looking forward to not only due to the subject matter but also because the lecturer is the former Chief Economist of the Bank of England. Furthermore, I have actually begun in earnest my study of German that I said I was going to start last term, I am continuing with my involvement in affairs at the Oxford Union, and I recently became interested in a writing group here called The Failed Novelists. All in all, everything is going splendidly, and I shall have more to write soon.