Week 21: The Freshman List
The hard part of the list is done, in terms of sitzfleisch. All that's left is the hard part, in terms of anxiety.
Over the past month I've gone through about 3000 articles in newspapers from Jamaica to India. That's 3000 articles which in some way mentioned one of the sixty-some names for quiz bowl used somewhere in the world. A good number of those are false leads, like how Academic Challenge is a term for quiz bowl in Ohio, but a statewide scholarship in Arkansas, or how Hi-Q is a term for a sought-after quality for semiconductors, but also a TV show in Atlanta.
This is what I do every summer, compile the largest list possible of students entering college who might be interested in quiz bowl. It's lots of work, but it has to be done. And it's not that I don't trust others with it, I accept the additions of dozens of people who make this list possible. But when people offer to help in June, I find myself wondering how they think this is accomplished. The set up work for this started months before, and it's only by starting early that this works at all.
How this works is I have a daily script that runs and searches online news sources for any term that may refer to quiz bowl. Every morning it sends me a digest of all the new articles that have been published. I then scan the headlines and knock out the obvious false positives (semiconductor breakthroughs and the like.) I start looking for senior information January 1, and keep going until June 30. I need four pieces of data for any name I find: Name, High School, State of High School, and College Choice. (Question you may ask, why don't you collect email? Well if I could find it for these, I would. Most newspapers don't publish that information.)
The two things we've added this year which have contributed to the collection rates:
1) If I find an article that looks like part of a series (either Student of the Week/Month or Class of 2020 profiles) I assume there will be articles of the series which are present in the newspaper's archive, and which will match the same search that brought me to article 1. Templates create patterns and patterns will repeat. In previous years, I had done this for a few newspapers that I knew were reliable in their style of producing content. (Newspapers in New Hampshire always seemed to do the top 10 students, Nebraska papers list activities without fail,) but taking a systematic approach to sweep up each paper at the end of the school year was not part of the everyday plan.
2) I expanded the search into twitter and from it, instagram. Principals around the nation used twitter to highlight seniors this year. Whether that trend occurs next year is unknown, but this year we collected 50 new names because of this pipeline.
I've been asked whether this sort of service is necessary in this day and age, usually by people who believe that outreach is obviously making it to everywhere they can see. Rather than reprimand their shortsightedness, I'd try to highlight how much of their worldview is Terra Incognita for quiz bowl activities, and even when WE know there is activity in an area, the residents may not know anything of what's happening nationally or even in the next town or county.
I phrase it to them this way: How would you have felt if people allowed you to remain unaware? You wouldn't have felt anything, but since you now know, you'd have been angry. I recognize not everyone wants to continue in college, but the decision to continue or not should be yours to make. And you need to know it's an option to make a decision.
As much as we believe we've created a clear path showing students that quiz bowl competition doesn't end with high school, there's wide swaths of the country where no one knows there's college competition. That's because there are areas with no college programs local to them, and areas where their high school programs make no connection with the college game. In our current situation, that isolation benefits no one, and actually threatens the viability of these competitions next year.
The problematic part this year is the normal channels which the circuit relies upon to replenish their numbers were disrupted at the worst possible moment:
-- Seniors were getting normal acceptance letters after the closing of schools and cancellation of events. This means the collection of college information at local events and especially national events didn't happen. Nationals registrations allowed for students to give this information, but in practice the majority of the data is only given onsite.
-- Television competitions, which usually interview students didn't tape normally. This cut off another method of college information gathering, as the playoff bound teams which had seniors didn't highlight where they were going.
-- Systematized data collection methods, as done in upstate New York with the Masterminds program, failed to get information before schools closed, and the communication between coaches and their seniors disappeared.
-- Coaches aware of the existence of the college circuit weren't able to get their senior information, because it was a much lower priority than keeping their classrooms on track.
This leaves us with a weird dataset for this year. Students highly engaged with the circuit are going to volunteer their information, or bypass the system altogether because they already have contact with the colleges they will attend. My efforts to gather the information through media will collect those who may be interested but didn't know about the existence of competition. But that middle layer, the key component of keeping programs alive and building teams at hundreds of institutions, that's at risk, and there's no good answer for it.
From here I have to group the whole set, knock out duplicates, and place them in a format so that names and abbreviations are unified. And then I have to get through the part that was always rough, the equivalent of cold calling people. Normally this is the simple part of screwing up my courage and writing a bunch of letters. In the early days of this I would tie myself in knots with anxiety at the thought I was disappointing people by not finding enough names going to their school, or that I was too late and the team had collapsed in the spring and now there was no one left to continue the program. Now I've got a different anxiety from that, can they find these people and keep them for next year.
Stuff to Watch
I'm going to take apart the seven videos in this series as the first section in a future week (why it’s important for television is a key point in the book’s construction), but this series on medical terminology and how to break down meaning from it is insanely valuable quiz bowl knowledge.
This study of the Reynolds number should help explain everything I did as an engineer. It's really only two equations, but the work is in deciding what of those equations matters, and what doesn't.
Stuff to Read
This telling of the composition of The Beatles' "A Day in the Life" contains the phrase "beachcombing inspiration" which is a better description of what we're doing here than I could ever come up with.
Discussion of the Beirut explosion brought this to Craig's attention, who noted that the story of chlorine trifluoride felt like it had a deep connection to me. I noted that it was so dangerous to those around it that it's classified in Florida as a resident. Read all about Fluorida Man here.
The Articles I Learned From This Week
The Swiss artist HR Giger's work on album covers.
I was unaware of this particular detail about Cortes after the capture of Tenochtitlan, and it's probably going to be a leadin once word spreads.
The Four Temperaments in Art
The Articles You Can Learn From This Week
At one point in a match I confused the Sans-Souci Palace with the Sans Souci Palace, and I don't think I ever forgave the writer for being unaware there were two. Well now you will know not to make that mistake.
The story of Cincinnatus and the myth which surrounded the Society of Cincinnati after the Revolutionary War is worth understanding, since it assembles lots of common shot material in one place.
Didn’t You Learn Anything from Last Time?
1
The Indian Space Agency's Shukrayaan-1 probe is slated to explore the atmosphere of this planet.
A. Name this planet, whose atmosphere consists mostly of carbon dioxide and nitrogen with sulfuric acid clouds.
answer: Venus
B. This series of Soviet probes launched between 1961 and 1984 attempted to land on Venus, lasting on the surface only as long as two hours.
answer: Venera
C. Most data on the Venusian surface came from the Venus Radar Mapper, part of this probe launched from the Space Shuttle Atlantis in 1989, and named for a Portuguese explorer whose mission was to circumnavigate the globe.
answer: Magellan
2
Name these acts which were passed by the British Parliament, which contributed to the American Revolution.
A. In addition to the namesake foodstuff, coffee, and wines saw their tax rates raised, while molasses saw its rate lowered.
answer: Sugar Act
B. This act, which was specifically refuted by the Third Amendment, required colonists to supply British soldiers with food and shelter.
answer: Quartering Act
C. This series of acts raised rates on imported glass, paint, and notably, tea. John Dickinson's "Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania" attacked the idea of taxing the colonies to raise revenue due to these acts.
answer: Townshend Acts
3
In 1902, a strike in this industry nearly paralyzed American industry.
A. Name this mined hydrocarbon, whose anthracite variety is prized as fuel.
answer: coal
B. To help mediate the strike,
answer: John Pierrepont Morgan
C. The choice of Morgan was unusual in that he was already a target of the Roosevelt administration, as his Northern Securities was prosecuted for violations of this 1890 act.
answer: Sherman Anti-Trust Act
4
They are differentiated from grotesques by having an non-decorative purpose; in this case, redirecting rain away from a building .
A. Name these sculptures which appear to be creatures perched upon the edge of buildings, taking their name from the French for "throat."
answer: gargoyles
B. Gargoyles were an established feature of this type of architecture to protect the elaborate masonry found in it and again in its 1800s revival.
answer: Gothic
C. In French folklore, St. Romain, bishop of this city, disposed of the fire-breathing La Gargouille and used its head as a waterspout on its cathedral. That cathedral was later painted repeatedly by Claude Monet and Roy Liechtenstein.
answer: Rouen
5
Answer the following about classification of the cube root of 2.
A. As it cannot be expressed as a quotient of two integers it is this kind of number.
answer: irrational number
B. As it can be the root of a polynomial with rational coefficients, it falls into this classification which excludes the transcendental numbers.
answer: algebraic number
C. Because it cannot be the length of a line segment drawn with compass and straightedge in a finite number of steps, it is not a member of this subset of the algebriac numbers.
answer: constructible numbers