Good Luck Prudence!

[wendybeth]

Wtg, Prudence!!!

I'm very relieved for you- this has to be a total stresser, and I admire that you're doing it. I'd be too damn chicken****. Gl in the next round!

[CoasterMatt]

You rock!

[Ghoulish Delight]

Awesome, sounds like you performed up to your own standards, who gives a flip what the judges pay attention to. Huzzah!

[Prudence]

Well, I'll be getting another shot at argument. The petitioner's side of the issue kind of tanked today, and we lost, so if we had the option of choosing which side to be tomorrow, the coaches were clear that it was going to be mine. As it happens, the other team won the coin toss - but since they chose the other side anyhow, I'm still going tomorrow. and in the early heat, of course.

I'm trying to re-muster my confidence. It helps that apparently the mean coach is telling everyone and their uncle how amazingly I did yesterday. Apparently I rocked her legal world. I hope she mentions this to her employer, should they need a new associate...

[Snowflake]

VISIBLE MOJO for you, my dear!

[wendybeth]

What Snow says!

[CrazyLegs]

Good Luck

[Prudence]

The hell is over.

The other team, of course, did wonderfully, and is now going on to nationals next month in Chicago. We got eliminated at the first opportunity.

It was a mixed bag of experiences that I'll have to describe more later, since I'm exhausted. I did learn a lot from the coaching, as much as I hated it. The competition itself? I learned a lot, not all of it pleasant.

In the first round, our competitor got higher marks for his excellent trial court style, even though this wasn't a mock trial and his lax manner would have been inappropriate for an appellate venue (particularly the Supreme Court.)

In the second round, when I didn't argue, my team mate apparently had a little too much to drink at lunch and somewhat let the team down.

In the third round, the other team had an amazingly smooth delivery - in part because they were making things up. They never had to look at their notes because if they didn't know the answer they just acted like they did - and that's how one wins competitions. The "judges" usually don't spend any time reading about the case beforehand, so they don't know any better, and the feedback is all about how the other team answered so easily and seemed to know all the details without ever having to check. Of course, they were wrong, but accuracy apparently doesn't count in this sort of thing.

Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I have too many shreds of honor left somewhere deep in my psyche and I can't bring myself to make things up or misrepresent facts or whatnot. Even if this isn't "real" and even if it's how the game is won. And not that the other team from my school did that, just that the schools my team went up against did. Well, one of them probably did, but one of them is also exceptionally honorable (and, probably not coincidentally, also their weak link.)

Anyhow, I have very mixed feelings about this right now. I vacillate between wanting to enter the next in-house competition and wanting to avoid anything like this again. One minute I'm sure that appellate work is what I want to do, and the next minute I'd rather just be a secretary for the rest of my life. One minute I'm proud of what I did do, and the next I'm furious with myself for having wasting everyone's time.

And NYC started to grow on me while I was there. I might go back some day.