Happy March! The weather has been… meh as of late. It’s warmish, but also snows occasionally and it bitterly cold at night. The unpredictable weather seems on par for this week though, a complete emotional rollercoaster. The mock trial team competed in regionals over the weekend. I went two rounds with my team and then another two rounds on a “bye-bust” which is where a bunch of strangers are thrown together to compete as one team. It sounds like fun and can be a chance to really experiment with new roles and theories. However, it is absolutely exhausting and you never know what you are going to get team-wise. By the end of the fourth round, my friend and I had just given up and were watching our own team compete, abandoning the bye-bust altogether.
The weekend culminated in closing ceremonies on Sunday night. We grabbed a mountain of pizza from Lulu Late Night, hunkered down in a Pendleton East classroom, and waited for our name to be called or not. Nobody on our team knew for sure if we were going to make it through because of our ballot-blind policy, but my gut told me we had done well. After practicing and scrimmaging for months, you kind of just know when you do well or when your team is winning- even if the ballots are hidden. We also were going up against some nationals level teams by the end, a signal that we were doing really well. By the time closing ceremonies rolled around, it seemed more likely than not that we would make it out. My prediction was wrong though. It was a massive fluke of the numbers and match-ups, but we didn’t get out of regionals by one point on one ballot. Let the hysterical sobbing ensue.
But then, PLOT TWIST, this little thing called the open bid list came to our rescue. As a result of some very complicated and convoluted rules that I don’t fully understand, we were offered a spot at ORCS (the next round) based on our regional performance. I went from absolute overwhelming panic to deep depression to being livid at the tab manual to, finally, elation. And all of it within the space of 24 hours! If you need me or anybody on the mock trial team weekend after St Patrick’s Day, we will be kicking butt in New Rochelle and possibly visiting the Thomas Paine Cottage Museum between rounds.
All of this is very exciting, of course, but does raise some issues relating to homework. I spent almost every waking hour of last week working towards regionals on the promise I would catch up next week. Well, next week has arrived and I am dedicating every waking hour to preparing for ORCS. I just now got around to actually celebrating our regionals victory with my friends.
On the agenda for this week: so so so many mock trial meetings, an American Studies midterm that I have not studied for, yoga Shabbat dinner, a mock trial scrimmage at MIT, and finally doing that load of laundry I have been putting off.
With love,
Jessie