Losing
A necessary byproduct of a competitive system is that someone has to lose each NFA-LD debate round. Since we employ a win-loss system for determing who wins one debater, will, by rule, leave each room with a loss.
Losing can be a very valuable part of the debate tournament. It mirrors life really well. You will not always get the job – you will not always get the promotion or the contract. Learning to lose gracefully can be yet another benefit of NFA-LD debate.
I’ve noticed a definite curve with how debaters approach losing. Usually, when debaters are brand new they don’t mind losing so much since not much of the debate round makes sense anyway so the ballot decision seems more or less random. Then, debaters start understanding what’s going on and start to get mad when they lose. Finally, most debaters by the end of the career understand the process and in really close rounds understand a loss even if they disagree with the decision.
As outlined in this post here from the realm of computer science – it may well be impossible to succeed without first failing:
Failure is a wonderful teacher. But there’s no need to seek out failure. It will find you. Whatever project you’re working on, consider it an opportunity to learn and practice your craft. It’s worth doing because, well, it’s worth doing. The journey of the project should be its own reward, regardless of whatever happens to lie at the end of that journey.
I think the same message applies to debate. I know that for me as a competitor I learned much more from my losses than my wins. My losses forced me to realize I didn’t do enough to win the ballot. It showed me where my weakness was and what I needed to do differently next time. However, I did not always learn from every loss and one of the main reasons is the self serving bias:
A self-serving bias occurs when people attribute their successes to internal or personal factors but attribute their failures to situational factors beyond their control. The self-serving bias can be seen in the common human tendency to take credit for success but to deny responsibility for failure
So in debate, this would happen if your losses are the judge’s faults but the wins are because you’re an amazing debater. Every loss is an injustice and every win is a deserved victory. There may be an occasional ballot which is so random you can write it off – but if you find yourself writing off ballot after ballot after ballot perhaps it’s not the judge you should be focusing on.
I would contend that the above attitude is a substantial barrier to success in debate. If you are doing something wrong and losing ballots blaming the judge will not help you in the next round. The same behavior will likely replicate itself and cause another loss.
I was impressed with Nick’s recap of the APU tournament where he acknowledged that in one round he deserved to lose.
Tim voted for the negative team, a decision I agreed completely with. There was simply no conceivable place on the flow to pull the trigger any other way.
Acknowledging that one has legitimately lost a round is an important step towards improving your ability to win future rounds. Acknowledging that you will fail occasionally in debates allows you to identify those weaknesses, work on them, and avoid them happening again.
Acknowledging failure is not an easy thing to do. I think it takes specific skills and communication to frame the discussion after a loss. As I mentioned above, I think one must learn ways to deal with failure and losing in debate.
Any tips or ideas on how you handle failure?
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Comments
I guess I’ll throw some more out here–this was a tough thing for me to learn as a novice and I think this post is fantastic and should prompt a lot more discussion.
If you keep losing to the same position (Ks, Ts, Politics DAs, CPs, whatever), try running them yourself. The benefit is twofold: you learn their strengths/weaknesses, and you get to gank answers from other debaters to add into your own frontlines. My sophomore year I was horrified at politics DAs, then I started running them, and now my mouth waters when a neg throws one out.
Sorry to distract from this post but I don’t know where else to ask this.
Can anyone post plans/advantages and major negative arguments for Point Loma, Air Force, UOP, Northern Arizona, or Concordia?
I tried looking on the case list for this info but it was either missing or overly vague. I don’t know if there is another NFA-LD message board that would be appropriate for this inquiry.
The post from the student at UCLA was fairly helpful, btw. Thanks for taking the time to document your tournament.
I’m not sure what each individual team is running. However, I would recommend that anytime you post a request for case lists you divulge a little of what you are running. Case lists are the classic free rider problem – some people share a lot and everyone else benefits. I think a good way to preface requests like this is to post your school’s information first. I know Nick did this with his UCLA case and Mat has promised it after fall champs.
I understand the sentiment of your post. However, my team hasn’t been to any tournaments this year and my 1AC is not near enough complete for me to upload. Once it is, I will upload it cite by cite just as I was used to in TOC/NDT-CEDA debate when I competed in that. As you know, full disclosures usually don’t occur until after the first round of the first tournament, customarily (which hasn’t occurred yet for my program).
These other programs are much larger, have enough judges working for them that they have all the intelligence they need and have been to tournaments already this year–yet the case list is pretty vague or non-existent in regards to what they are running.
On the negative, the base strat will be politics afghanistan/health care bill/climate change, lopez/states cp, federalism, econ with additions based upon the case.
Not trying to make an indict, just looking for intelligence that should honestly be available on the case list by now.
Bigger programs should lead the charge, btw. How can they expect programs with one or two teams to load all of their info when the other programs have this listed:
1. time cube
2. ferries.
LOL, seriously.
The team largely responsible for that list is Western Kentucky, who doesn’t really make it out West for LD tournaments.
Just block the Lafayette evidence and you’ll be off to a good start. If you’re competitive enough that you need blocks to the big schools’ cases, your generics should be good enough to get traction versus most of the circuit.
Not to change the changed subject…
I’m not long for the debate world. After jumping in at the beginning of the year, I’m leaving for activities more in-line with my major.
But in the little experience I’ve had, I would argue that the best debate rounds I’ve had are the ones that I lost. At the very least, it’s better to think that you lost or be unsure than to know, unequivocally, that you won.
Rounds that you KNOW you have won aren’t very fun rounds. The only time when you are full certain is when you have beaten your opponent severely enough that there is no joy or honor in it.
The good rounds are the ones where you feel as though you’ve just been fighting for forty-five minutes. It’s the raw delight of mental exhaustion, having just thrown yourself into a verbal sparring match with everything you have. I lose those rounds as much as I win them, but it still feels GOOD.
I’m sorry you feel debate is not lining up with your education goals but I applaud you for figuring that out now rather than later. Good luck in your other pursuits!
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Absent arguments that never entered the round coming into the RFD, a judge not voting where you think they should have is almost always the result of something you could have done better. If the no-link to the DA was a game winner, and the judge didn’t agree, sell it better next time. This is advise I give my freshmen, and it seems pretty productive towards helping them focus more on improvement and less on complaining.