I'd like to start out by saying that I am relatively new to the college circuit, and that though I do read all the posts, even the multitude about LA, I do not respond very often. That being said, I am very interested in the future of the circuit, because I like to think that I am a part of that. I agree with some of the other posts that grad students are not a bad thing. I think they serve several essential functions and to rid ourselves of them would be a mistake. When I came to Texas A&M last year, I did so in large part because I knew there was an active college team here. Once I arrived, I quickly learned how different this was from the high school circuit. Were it not for our grad students, I know that the program here would not exist. I realise that at other schools this may not be the case, but for us it is a frightening reality. Further, while I learned how to write questions in high school, I do not think I would have been able to write a worthwhile packet for a college tournament without the guidence of our grad students. As to the question of embarassment at the hands of grad students, I remember playing in high school a couple of times and loosing worse than anything here in college. I was on a freshman team last year at ACF nationals and not a single game was as humiliating as playing against the nationally elite in high school when I was a freshman there. Also, I do not think it is such a bad thing for newbies to get beaten badly. My high school coach taught us that sometimes losses like that are character building. It helps to keep you humble, as well as showing you where you can be. Finally I would like to weigh in with a different take on the question writing ideas. I think that it is important for the more expierianced players to help the newer among us learn to write more effectively. I cannot count the numbers of times that Chris Romero and I have argued about questions that I submit to him, and while at the time it pisses me off to no end, I can see improvement in my questions as a result of that now. I would encourage those tournament editors, team elders, and other "dinosaurs" to take the time to critique every packet they read. If you are nto teaching your own teamates how to write, then who is? Also, I think it would be helpful if one of the grand mystics in our circuit were to put together a definitive "how-to" guide and post it to the web. Perhaps that is already out there and I just don't know it, but if not I would encourage lots of the older players to put something together. Well that is a lot longer than I intended to write, but I hope I said something worthwhile there. Thanks for reading. Alex Metcalf
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