> ...Of course, "fun" is relative. Let me explain:
>
> Today was my school's first Academic Challenge meet. The way it works is that teams from two opposing schools meet and answer miscellaneous questions. A four-person team is assembled at the start of the game. On regular questions, the team cannot discuss amongst themselves. When a team gets a question right, they get a bonus question that they can discuss the answer to. Both types are worth ten points.
> After around 100 questions, the teams can change and another round is played. At the end of this round, the scores are tallied and the team with the highest score wins.
>
> On to the match.
>
> Our first team was made up of seniors. We did fairly well, but not well enough; we were losing 220-240. The second team was me (a freshman), a sophomore, a junior, and a senior. We lost 320-550.
>
> Of course, the fact that I knew NEXT TO NONE of the questions didn't help, nor did the fact that I knew a good half of the questions in the first round and nearly all of the other team's bonuses.
>
> After that defeat, I tried to get back into the school. All of the doors were locked. I wandered in the cold for a good ten minutes before waiting for someone to let me in. This, fortunately, did not take long.
>
> I went to call Mom to pick me up. Well, it turned that my phone card had JUST run out of time. It took me a minute to realize that the phone did NOT require exact change.
>
> How stupid of me.
>
> I called, only to find out that she'd already gone. I returned to the foyer. Mom showed up soon after and that ended the "fun". Thank goodness.
>
> Saku[Oh, and I just got back from an awful flute lesson, but that doesn't count.]ra

I'm on my school's academic competition team, too, and getting beaten is painful.

Our league's setup is a bit different. There are three different teams: Freshman, Junior Varsity, and Varsity. After a certain amount of time they switch.

When we're losing and we have no idea how to answer and no way of winning, we get very silly and answer with hilarious, stupid, or nonsensical answers ("Vanilla Ice" seemed for some reason to be a popular answer for "who" questions among J.V. and Varsity last year). Our matches start in February and we're in training now.

-eric "No, the first planet we landed a satellite on was NOT the moon!" sleator
Thu 4 Jan A.D. 2001