Academic Team Update - 12/15/09

Today at Academic Team we resumed practice of the lightning round. Dr. Stewart had a giant book of random lists of trivia. We were given bells to ring when we knew the answer. The questions had to do with airport codes, international cities and rivers, and other things like internet domains. I think I did well on them considering by aptitude for geography. That is definitely one of my strengths on the team, and I think that when we have to choose players for the lightning round in January that I will be chosen if the topic has anything to do with geography.

After we finished up practice on the lightning round, we moved on to Trivial Pursuit questions. These always tend to be challenging and random. I did well on the geography ones, but did miss a few including one about the Eiffel Tower. There was another moment where Mr. Scott asked the city that Orly Airport served, and instead of saying Paris I said France, which made me feel very embarrassed. For the most part, we did really well on the Trivial Pursuit questions and everyone on the team made fair contributions.

In the most recent Academic Team meetings, a unilateral rivalry has been developing between Marliee and me. She seems to take it as an offense when I know an answer to a question that she doesn't. It makes me feel bad that she gets angry at my success, and I really don't understand why she does. Because of this conundrum, I was forced to consider the ethical implications of my actions when I decided to approach her about it. I didn't know if it was the best idea to talk to her about her opposition to my success, but I decided that this rivalry needed to be resolved for the betterment of the team. I asked why she was acting like this and she said that she sees my extensive geographical knowledge as impressive but also a fault of hers because she knows very little on the subject. I asked her to stop with this competitive attitude and she agreed that she will lay off the rivalry. I hope it will end and that by deciding to talk to her about it, our team will get stronger.