January PF Topic Research
Resolved: The costs of a college education outweigh the benefits.
Some useful links on the January Public Forum Topic. You can find more by searching through government databases. And it’s all free!
BARRIERS TO EQUAL EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES: ADDRESSING THE RISING COSTS OF A COLLEGE EDUCATION
HIGHER EDUCATION, HIGHER COST AND HIGHER DEBT: PAYING FOR COLLEGE IN THE FUTURE
BUDGETING FOR EDUCATION: THE ROLE OF PERKINS LOANS
EXAMINING UNETHICAL PRACTICES IN THE STUDENT LOAN INDUSTRY
(I love that the stats for this blog entry show people got here by googling the exact words of the resolution… dear students, I promise there are better ways to do research! I’ll write some helpful blog posts about it soon!)
Why all the hate for 2011?
As another calendar year comes to an end and a new year anxiously waits for it’s turn with us, I can’t help but get frustrated at the number of people who have done nothing in the last few weeks but shit on 2011 like it was a roadside portapot.
I get that life is frustrating. Bad things happen. Not everything goes the way we plan.
But really the ENTIRE year sucked? I sincerely doubt every waking moment in 2011 was filled with terribleness.
I am not trying to be ultra peppy or a total cheerleader, but if you don’t take a moment to celebrate the good things that have happened in your past year, how can 2012 ever live up to your hopes and dreams?
So take a minute and write down 12 good things that happened in 2011. One for each month. I challenge you to go into 2012 celebrating your past and taking that positivity to ring in the new year!
Reflecting on Resolutions
A group of friends and I email each other. We all met on a weight loss message board. And today, one of the girls shared our list of resolutions for 2011. Had we met them yet? And within that link was a link to our resolutions for 2010.
The resolution I made for 2010 was made in a drunken state but involved running. I wanted to run a marathon. And complete 2010km over the year. Great resolutions until I injured myself the day after I made the resolution. I was out of commission and spent most of the year rehabbing my leg.
So for 2011, I decided on a more general resolution. I wrote:
“I am just focused on enjoying the year, making it the best I can, and staying healthy”
Did I meet this resolution? The year itself had some ups and downs. However, I ended it feeling better about myself and my life and in general knowing more about my health and how to better it.
For 2012, I have set similar goals for myself:
When hotels seems more familiar than home…
Courtyard by Marriott in Illinois
Doubletree Hilton in California
Springhill Suites by Marriott in Minnesota
Courtyard by Marriott in California
Springhill Suites by Marriott in Alaska
Springhill Suites by Marriott in New York
Fairfield Inn by Marriott in New York
There was a time when I spent a weekend sleeping in my own bed. However, it hasn’t been recent.
You may have noticed a trend. Because even when you travel a lot for work, there is something reassuring about knowing the layout of your hotel room in the dark. Of knowing what the bed (should) feel like. What the towels and shampoo and coffee will feel, smell, and taste like.
Even in the constant state of change there is consistency for me. However there is also a sense of impersonality. The pictures hanging on the walls are “local” or “themed” to “personalize” the experience. But nothing can be as personal as the warm purring bodies of four-legged friends trying to climb on your face so you will wake up and feed them. Or the steady snore of your best friend laying next to you dreaming.
I bring things with me that remind me of home. Things that might seem strange or out of place, but provide visual, tactile, sensory memories of the family I leave each weekend. It makes the travel a little less difficult. And personalizes my foreign but familiar weekend abode.
Twitter Lesson Learned
One of the lessons I learned this weekend via tweets from another session was that I should set time limits on my social media. So I am giving myself one hour to tweet. During that time I can also play on Facebook. And that’s it! I can divide it up into up to three segments during the day. Today it worked out pretty well, despite the notifications popping up on my phone and in my email. During the tournaments I might let this rule slide but I need to allow myself to unplug from the constant stream of information.
Now to figure out rules to limit television and get me on my feet more! Suggestions?
IFBC Santa Monica comes to a close
Morning. Fruit and potatoes. Homemade energy bite.
Monetary decisions. To monetize or to save? Saving seems more practical. Lots of tips. Lots of tweets.
Dietary restriction? Reframe it. You can’t choose everything on the menu anyways. You eliminate those options by choice. Just choose to eliminate those that do not make you stronger. Choose quality. Discover new options. Recognize your strength.
Closing. Portland 2012.
After-party? Fabulous. Friends. Strangers. Community. Welcoming. Choices. Delicious choices. No waiting. Warmth in the form of sun, smiles, jokes, food, and fermented grape. Highlight of the weekend. This moment of community forever frozen. Stored in the memory box and wiping clean any of the anxiety and disappointment from before. Singing. Dancing. Video. Fingered Citron. You can’t plan this. You can’t pay for this in your conference registration fees.
Ultimately, what I continue to realize as I attend these conferences is that I always set expectations high for the event itself. When in reality, it’s never the event that changes me or inspires me. It is the other people attending the event. Sharing their homes, their food, their stories and smiles. If I could thank all of them independently, I would. But I would be thanking for longer than I have battery life on my well-worked laptop. I hope they realize how amazing they all are. And if not, let me just say…
Thank you.
Day Two. Reframing Fail. Community Win.
Morning. Looming clouds in the distance. Walking. Beach. Sand. Surf. Freeing.
Workshop after workshop. Writing. Finding the story. Video. Tweeting. Learning.
Lunch. Anxiously awaiting the mobile eats. Disappointment. Trying to not be upset over not being able to eat. The difficulty in reframing and being positive. Losing focus. Feeling like a victim. The wrong approach. But the one taken.
Gathered with positive bloggers. A short walk and a lot of options. Filling real food. Fabulous conversation. Spirits raised but anxiety lies low. Hiding to finish work and regroup. Emotions run high. Difficulty remaining positive.
Wine. Food. Blog. Fun workshop. Lots to learn. Friendly faces. Not short sentences with quick escape routes like many encountered.
Dinner. Anxiety returns. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Trying not to bitch. But waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Anxious. Hungry.
Salad: Without cheese. Tasty.
Entree: Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Entire table has finished eating. Can’t help the negative feelings that return. Frustration. Plate of vegetables with nothing else is served. Vegetables are good but there is more than just vegetables.
Twitter on the big screen? Shows others had more. Amplifies the frustration and anxiety building. Just wanting to feel normal is dying to scream out. Friends come to rescue. Garbanzos arrive.
Dessert: Fruit on lettuce. Nothing on it. Nothing. Arrives long after others have eaten. Food is community. Feeling like a community of one.
Pain. Night cut short.
*****
It’s frustrating to be in a frequent state of low-level pain and to not know what causes it. To have it flare up and not be able to control it. For everyone wanting to help and offer opinions to the point of being overwhelming. Frustration because in the quest to be normal and have fun, turns into feeling like an outsider. One year ago I wasn’t the strange kid. Now I feel like a negative ball of energy is fighting inside of me, only amplified by being here. But I will keep trying to work on reframing. Takeaway from a session on the third day will be reframing to consider a life of inclusion instead of exclusion. To reframe. To walk away with the positive.
Day One: IFBC (International Food Bloggers Conference, Santa Monica)
Sitting in the back of a hotel conference room, looking around at familiar and not familiar faces. Writers. Photographers. Eaters. Coming together under one roof with a mission. Or rather many missions and purposes that dissolve into a greater purpose.
Anticipation. Anxiety. Excitement. The pre-conference jitters fill the stomach and leave attendees with high hopes for a pricey weekend with promises of good eats and adventures and gifts!
Reality? The truth is the reality is amazing (an apparently overused but still applicable word) but not what was expected. Mundane to those who can’t embrace the opportunity to absorb from the experiences of peers and idols. Swag-minimists rejoice while swag-seekers weep. This isn’t a place for freebie grabbing groupies but instead an opportunity to focus on craft.
The second year. A chance to get past the glitz, and settle into the routine. Panels. PowerPoint. People. Peace. Socializing while seeking something more.
I am honored and humbled by meeting all of you. Please vote for me. We aren’t those people who tweet to seek you as a follower but instead tweet to build community. Do your tweets serve a purpose? Do they matter to more than two people? Does it matter? The purpose of social media is in the hands of the iPhone holder with a Twitter account. But keep your dalliances on the up and up. Keep it ethical… if you know what ethics even are. Who here knows the difference between ethics and morals?
Bites. Lots and lots of bites. Food and beverage. Gulps of liquid fermented fruit. Crowds and hands and glasses and overwhelmed because the numbers that seemed so small in that mundane conference room have been condensed in a well-lit atrium and the lively antics are amplified.
Suddenly the growling stomaches are satiated. Special diet needs are met. Sadness because the freebie grabbing means there isn’t enough for all. But reframing again and recognizing the sponsored swag isn’t the end goal. But illusion of shared community is smudged.
Walking. Talking. Opening up to strangers, now perhaps friends? Late nights. Index card back-up systems and small group discussions. Old relationships and new. No pressure. No sponsored banners. Just people with beverages in chairs talking about food. It’s this moment. You can’t put this moment in a swag bag. You can’t put this moment in a PowerPoint. This is the moment that exceeds expectations.
Inspiration
Six days ago I was riding in a car along the Alaskan coast and talking about blogging. I realized during this conversation that I let my own blogs fall to the wayside when the stress of life comes along. This was what prevented me initially with starting this blog almost a year ago. Because I didn’t know if I wanted something that would be a record of my failure to update. I can get my regular job done, but when blogging becomes a chore that needs to be completed instead of something you turn to for inspiration, it becomes hard to stay motivated to keep up. However, I don’t want to see this outlet die, and so with a renewed strength, I blog on.
There is something to be said for the “All or Nothing” attitude
I committed to blogging every day. In my mind it meant I had to blog every day. And once I missed a day, I said I would write two blogs the next day. And when that didn’t happen…
Well you can see where this went for about a month. When I realized it was now or never. If I didn’t start blogging again then my fabulous idea of documenting a year of coaching would gather cyber-dust. And that would be silly since I paid for the domain name!
Clearly life is stressful and frustrating. We all have plans and sometimes those plans don’t work out. We can either give up, or dust off that cyber dust and hop back into the game. So I am back. And while I hope I will blog every day, if I miss a day I won’t kick myself for it.
It reminds me of my students. Many times I ask if they are ready for a practice debate and they tell me that their cases aren’t ready yet. Often times it is because their cases aren’t “perfect” and they don’t want to “lose” the practice debate. However, this all or nothing attitude prevents them from getting in the early practice rounds and they miss opportunities to find ways to strengthen their cases or create unique blocks to their opponents cases. Things that can only be discovered through actual practice rounds. By putting it off and off and off, they miss out. By putting off blogging until I can catch up on the daily posts, I miss an opportunity to capture my thoughts and actions. Which means I get the “nothing” end of the all or nothing mindset, and that just sounds like a waste of a domain name.
Hello from Salt Lake City!
The Alta Silver & Black tournament is in full swing in Utah this weekend. The tournament has amazing hospitality, great competition, and is very well run. My students don’t debate the December topic because of finals, but I was lucky enough to come out as an additional driver and chaperone this weekend. I also learned something new that may have derailed healthy eating during my visit…
Red Vines are vegan!!!
What is Plea Bargaining?
Some helpful links to get you started on the January topic:
ExpertLaw Backgrounder on Plea Bargaining
An interesting book, this link takes you to a discussion about plea bargaining in Criminal Justice Ethics: Theory and Practice by Cyndi Banks.
Some Pros and Cons about Plea Bargaining from Larry J. Siegel’s Introduction to Criminal Justice textbook.
Finally, some possibly useful impacts to plea bargaining in Plea Bargaining’s Triumph: A History of Plea Bargaining in America by George Fisher.
Resolved: In the United States, plea bargaining undermines the criminal justice system.
Welp, let’s see how January plays out! Leaving for the first tournament in 15 days!
Finals are fast approaching…
Courtesy of PhD Comics
Public Forum Debate Forums
I am not sure how you found my site, but if you are interested in checking out what seems to be a growing forum for Public Forum debate, I would encourage you to check out PFDebate where there is a blog, wiki, and forums. While I always take the general populations comments with a grain of salt, I think Bob, the owner of PFDebate, is doing a huge community service by hosting and maintaining the site. It is always interesting to see what happens when a community forum is made available to a national audience of high school academics. Enjoy!
Musings on the January PF Topic Vote
While we haven’t received an email from the National Forensics League, the three Public Forum topics are up for voting for January. And the choices are…
- Resolved: The United States federal government should legalize marijuana.
- Resolved: In the United States, elections for federal office should be financed exclusively with public funding.
- Resolved: In the United States, plea bargaining undermines the criminal justice system.
I was beginning to do research on the topics and write out my deliberations before voting and then realized I could write them out here just as easily as on a piece of paper (and maybe save a tree in the process?).
The first thing I can do is rule out the marijuana topic. I recognize kids may want to debate it. We wanted to debate it 12-15 years ago when I was a high school debater. It was worn out then and the debate really hasn’t evolved much. The research is still skewed, there are still lots of biased sources around. For selfish reasons, I would love to see a more unique topic proposed. Additionally, having seen a number of PF rounds this year, I could easily see students turning this into a medical merijuana debate which isn’t what the broad topic proposes but is an easy way out of a fair number of arguments. And the medicinal debate has been beaten to death.
Let’s move on to the Plea Bargaining topic. I think this topic is pretty interesting. However, it is a rehash of a 2007 Lincoln-Douglas debate topic and let’s be honest, how many debaters are going to complain about that. Because heaven forbid we ever see a topic repeat in our history. There definitely have never been political battles about similar topics, or wars over similar… oh wait….
But on a serious note, I do worry the topic is a bit broad for a 37 minute debate. The criminal justice system is pretty huge. Which means we will probably have lots of counterexample wars where winning arguments on both sides lack comparable quantifications and pass by each other like ships in the night, forcing judges to cherry-pick what they want to vote on.
I recognize the complaints from people who think the public funding for elections smells like the lobbying topic. I think some of those arguments could be made here (see above sarcasm as to why I don’t care about that argument), however I also think this resolution poses some real world, real time questions. This is especially true with the mid-term elections just ending and the run for the 2012 presidential campaigns getting heated up.
You can guess how I voted. Now I can only hope that in the month my team debates multiple tournaments every weekend, that I get to see some amazing debates!
A must read for health food fans!
I have been reading a delicious book that I encourage foodies and the socially conscious to check out.
Can’t wait to make the recipes I am reading about but I am loving the themes of healthy eating, loving yourself, and caring for the world around you.
Blech – Sick on Vacation?
It only makes sense that the longest break I get is also the first time I get sick in forever. Go figure! I used to joke that the reason I never took a vacation was because my body wouldn’t get a chance to get sick because it was too busy. Despite it being totally unhealthy, I think there may have been some truth to it.
Aside from sleeping tons, I am also drinking a fair amount of tea, making sure I take my vitamins, and eating an umeboshi plum a day. Hoping to be better by tomorrow so I can get some more cleaning done. Would love for this place to be shiny before I head back to work on Monday!
What are your non-drug cure-alls?
Vegan Thanksgiving
There are many things I am thankful for this season. In celebration, today we will drive to Lodi to feast with the family. After a couple months of eating mostly vegan with a couple of cheats, I decided to plunge in for good this week. What a time, right? Thanksgiving? Well guess what! Today’s meal was fabulous!
- Field Roast Grain Meat Co. Celebration Loaf
- Clementine Cranberry Sauce
- Sage Mushrooms (with vegan margarine)
- Mashed Potatoes (sans dairy)
- Garlic Green Beans
- Sweet Potato Salad
- French Bread
- Maple Walnut Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World
What is your favorite Thanksgiving dish?
Vacation – What’s That?
Schedule for today:
- Spa appointment
- Grocery shopping for Thanksgiving
- Meet with department member to review budget proposals for her area
What a short short list! Can you believe it? Aside from cleaning house and budget prep, I have five fabulous days of freedom!!! I am off to enjoy it while it lasts. This is the longest block of time off I have had since June!
The Joys of Change or How We Entertained 27 Teens
So today we were supposed to go into Chicago to explore. The students were excited about the opportunity. However, with so many of our chaperones needing to fly home last night to make it back in time for Parent-Teacher Conferences (which the coaching staff misses because the tournament doesn’t finish until tonight for some participants), we were going to have to do multiple shuttle runs to the commuter train station and then would be walking all over the city.
Mother Nature was not a fan of this idea. The rain, thunder, and lightening woke us up long before our planned meeting time and the two of us taking the kids on this expedition needed to change up plans and fast. Our third coach was already at the tournament, so anything we did with our students, it couldn’t be far and it couldn’t be expensive.
So I hopped on Yelp and got to work. I love using Yelp to find food options but it also worked in this case for entertainment. We quickly found a bowling alley/arcade nearby and a movie theatre just a couple blocks from that. So we took the kids to the bowling alley where they had inter-squad challenges and when they got bored they wandered into the arcade or got to play pool with each other. The onto the movie theatre for two and a half hours of Harry Potter. Not quite the day we had planned but one the students hopefully enjoyed.
Quick and Easy: Healthy Tournament Meals at Glenbrooks
The following list is the food I purchased, prepared, and consumed during the long tournament days at The Glenbrooks. Hopefully it will give you some ideas on what you can pack to maintain wellness in the future. I usually pack the items in one brown paper grocery sack and leave it somewhere to return to during the tournament instead of toting it around all day.
- Almond Butter and Fruit Spread Sandwiches on Whole Grain Bread
- Pre-sliced cucumbers, celery, baby carrots
- Clementines
- Dates
- Pistachios in-shell
- Edamame in-pod
- Honeycrisp apples
- Electrolyte water
- Coconut water
Good luck to any teams competing on Monday!
Starbucks. You should probably buy some stock in it.
This will be the first of many odes to one of my biggest vices. But as the first day of competition at the Glenbrooks wraps up and I desperately seek some sleep, I wanted to pay homage to the over priced frilly beverages that brighten my debate-ridden days.
green and white paper cup
filled with joy, sugar, soy, and love
you kept me sane today
Seriously. The baristas at the Starbucks near campus know me. In one day. Because only a debate coach makes multiple (*cough* three *cough* plus one someone offered to do for me *cough*) trips in one day. It’s a bad habit. But probably not the worst habit I could have.
Drinks I had today:
- Venti Unsweetened Passion Iced Tea (2 times)
- Venti Iced Soy Latte
- Venti Coffee Frappuccino Light with Soy Milk and 1 pump Mocha and 2 pumps Peppermint
- Tall Iced Soy Pumpkin Latte
Now to get some sleep because tomorrow will be another long day!
The Healthy Academic 