Monday, October 28, 2002

The Actual Meat behind the Previous Headline
So Andrea misses my rants. I don't really blame her: I do as well. Storey says that he finds refreshing honesty on people's webpages: again, I have to agree. Surprisingly enough, both of those are reasons I haven't been posting.

I know I get too honest when I post on this page. I know that people read this page who are either former friends of mine, or who claim to be friends of mine without acting like it, and people who are not friends of mine. I didn't think they had a right to hear me be honest. I've given up, because this is my website.

I'm going to be extremely honest: I'm upset. I'm hurt. When we first tossed the idea of hosting nationals around, we thought our biggest problems would be within our school themselves. This turned out to be the case. I spent hours and hours, weeks and weeks in that office, making sure that everything was alright. They turned around and lied to me, lied about me, and did many different things to cause problems. The main reason i didnt want to be president of our team this year was not for my sanity, though it should have been, but because my university would treat PDS as an organization differently if I was not one of the main decisionmakers.

I didn't think I had to worry about APDA.

I'm not going to deal with details here-I posted a 4 page novel to APDAnet that I would mirror here if i cared. It details all of the reasons why everything is happening the way it is, except one important detail: people who give themselves too much importance. That's what this boils down to: we bitch about money, none of which is ours unless there are special circumstances. We bitch about precedents as seniors, when we won't be here to look at the precedents. We talk about issues that were settled five years ago, exactly, because no one that was on the circuit now was on the circuit then - and especially we try to downgrade one region's access to debate based on some kind of abstract set of principles. We then rant about a north/south divide, and attack people on the other side. We don't realize that all of the things that MIGHT be good in the abstract fall down when put into REAL LIFE SITUATIONS. We forget that there are real people behind the debate cases we run. Even when those real people are sitting in the other semifinal.

I just wish people would take into account feelings, every now and again.

UMBC did not spend money on controlled substances for nationals. If UMBC was going to misallocate money to do things like that, a) I would have liked to see some of the controlled substances or b) I would have liked to see some of the money. People don't realize these things. People don't realize that every penny we spend means thats another penny not being spent somewhere else. Like on Jess's credit card. But mainly, people don't realize that there are real people and real feelings behind their abstract ideas. And even if the idea of an audit "needs to be discussed rationally," a semifinal where no one in the room has any CLUE how nationals worked, a semifinal filled with complaints about toilets, "wonderfullness" jokes, and insults is not the place to do it. One of your judges tried to abstain. My response? I cried, and thank you to Josh who helped me pull myself together.

Why am I here? Why am I still doing this? Will someone give me one reason to stay?

If i quit, will this make you stop attacking the organization that I had to rebuild? If I just leave the whole organization, will the north/south divide become less aggravated? Will people pick another whipping boy or just dis me in my absence?

Finally, I know I'm here because of everything I've told you over the years. I found the love of my life here. I found the foundation for the rest of my life here. I found someplace and an avenue for me to do what i love - now im not just talking about APDA. Becuase I think APDA has a lot of things that it needs to reevaluate before outsiders start respecting it as an organization. Seriously. Other debate organizations within the United States don't look at us as prestigious. Many of them look at us taking our schools money to go drink and not doing anything substantive with it.

I want to do something to change that. But for now, this is me.

I'm hurt, I'm curling in the corner, I'm hiding from the world. I feel like I did 2 years, five months and 14 days ago, for those of you who know what that date is. Except this time, it was personal, not just a misunderstanding without any real malice behind it.

That's all I got to say. Thank you to those people who are wonderfullness - you know who you are.

katie says hi at 6:47:55 PM

Sunday, October 27, 2002

Me:

kate!

eric!


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