Debate Advice: How to Improve at Camp
By: Alexandra Mork
Summer is a crucial time for debaters to make massive strides in their knowledge and ability. Camp allows debaters to dedicate all of their time to debate and receive advice from knowledgeable and experienced instructors. Below, I’ve provided some advice for how to improve at camp over the summer.
Determine your weak points. For some people, one specific argument that they consistently lose to and need to improve upon will be obvious. For others, losses may seem unrelated and scattered across the board. If the latter applies to you, I suggest going through your recent rounds to find any common themes. My freshman year, I wrote down the reason for decision in every round of the season and organized them in one word document, so I could easily see all the arguments I lost to and place them under broad umbrella categories. This allowed me to determine what I needed to improve upon so that I could do targeted drills.
What do you want to be great at? Whether it’s giving a NR overview on afropessimism or a 2ar on conditionality theory, find a few things that you want to master over the summer. How many things you focus on is largely dependent on how long you’re attending camp for, what you’re interested in, and what your current level of experience is. For example, if you’ve never read a capitalism kritik, it will probably take more time for you to do the necessary reading, drills, and block writing to be able to master it than it would if you want to perfect your 2ar on a theory shell you’re already confident going for.
Once you determine what you want to improve upon, determine how you intend to achieve those goals. Commit yourself to working towards at least one of your goals per day. For example, give 5 speeches a day for a week on a specific argument, organize a drill packet so that you can practice answering the best arguments against your position of choice, or choose a couple books or articles to read over the summer to increase your knowledge in one or two areas.
Reach out for help -- ask questions if you’re confused and if your camp offers office hours, take advantage of that! Office hours is an amazing opportunity to get advice from people that specialize in every area of debate that you may not otherwise be able to interact with. Furthermore, giving drills in front of multiple people is helpful for learning how to adapt to different judges that you may encounter throughout the year.
Take diligent notes during lab -- this is pretty self-explanatory, but do your best to pay attention during lab rather than playing video games or getting otherwise distracted on your computer. One way to combat this is to take notes on paper, but even if you don’t get distracted while taking notes on the computer, most research confirms that taking notes by hand is beneficial for memory retention. Whether you take notes directly on the computer or transcribe them on your computer after writing them by hand, it’s also very important to organize your notes. Rather than making one long notes doc titled “Camp Notes”, try to immediately organize your notes based on the specific topic (i.e. “Counterplan Competition Notes”) or integrate them into your blocks/files, so that you can easily pull them up during rounds, rather than having to scroll through one huge file.
Make friends -- camp is a great time to meet new people that you may interact with throughout the season. Check out Jessa Glassman’s article to read more about the importance of forming connections within the debate community.
Take care of yourself. At camp, lack of sleep and close quarters and make the rapid spread of illness very possible. If you’re feeling sick, don’t be afraid to take a day off of lab to improve your physical health. In addition to focusing on your physical health, you should also prioritize your mental health. While making friends is one way to do this, you should also make sure that you get a sufficient amount of sleep on a nightly basis, and allow your mind to rest in order to avoid burnout. Being mentally and physically well is not only more important than your debate skills, but also is a necessary prerequisite to improving your debate ability.
While attending camp is one way to improve, it is certainly not the only one. Debate camp is not only time consuming, but also very expensive. If you are unable to attend camp this summer, much of this advice is still applicable, but I also suggest reading my article from last year about drills to do in your free time.