Yeah indeed I think my engagement profile was different from the more competitive attitudes you’d expect high-powered teams/unis to have—our debating club was a small one at a school self-consciously focused on engineering, so it was much more hobbyist. I was always in it for self-growth rather than winning, so it served as a good check on the kind of intellectual hubris that accrued as I was levelling-up in physics. We were fortunate to have a handful of emerita members that could pass on a lot of their knowledge without expecting a big commitment to competition performance. But I’m not surprised (and sorry to hear!) that there are suckier steady-states.
Yeah indeed I think my engagement profile was different from the more competitive attitudes you’d expect high-powered teams/unis to have—our debating club was a small one at a school self-consciously focused on engineering, so it was much more hobbyist. I was always in it for self-growth rather than winning, so it served as a good check on the kind of intellectual hubris that accrued as I was levelling-up in physics. We were fortunate to have a handful of emerita members that could pass on a lot of their knowledge without expecting a big commitment to competition performance. But I’m not surprised (and sorry to hear!) that there are suckier steady-states.