So, it’s the day before the tournament and you have no prep: a guide from a very burnt out debater
Do you care about your ranks in this tournament? Because this will fundamentally change what you should do
If you don’t care about your ranks:
PO. If you don’t know how to PO, have someone teach you and learn quickly. This helps both if you care and don’t care. (I’ll post a guide for PO-ing later)
Crystal. Crystalling is when you summarize all the arguements in a round and argue why your side overall wins the debate. You need to have really good flow and really good fluency/good bs-ing skills because you CANNOT prepare a crystal in advance
Hope and pray a teammate won’t be in your chamber and steal their speech
Possibly, don’t speak on a bill. If it’ll do you better to give no speech than a bad speech (depends on your definition of bad), then don’t speak. It sucks, but if you’re like me, it’s because you’re burnt out
If you care about your ranks:
PO. Same as what I said before- and a lot of judges rank POs very highly. Just make sure what you know what you’re doing, and try to have a gavel beforehand, otherwise you look very unprepared
Try and get speeches from other people. It’s embarrassing, I know, but if they’re not in your chamber then it’s up for grabs if you ask me
Crystal. I’m putting this at the bottom, because as I said- it’s hard even if you take good flow, because you need to have good fluency & improv skills. If you can pull one off, go for it. Crystal your every speech, but for someone who’s not, I’d recommend to try something else
Stay up late & wake up early. I lied, this is the bottom, because IMO, to preform well, you need good sleep, and I can’t recommend this in good faith. But if you can’t PO, crystal, or get speeches from other people, you don’t really have any other choice. And I’ll be honest, it sucks. If you need help with researching, send me a dm and your timeframe and I’ll see what I can do if I see it in time. Just… take care of yourself.
Good luck, y’all! My night before the tournament tips are here, and you’re gonna do great! Remember- you’re always right, and they’re always wrong
