The Waiting Room

The big debate was on Monday. I waited until today to give you the full story, because the whole thing transpired over two days.

FW's team went first. FW was the team leader and was charged with the opening statement for his team. It was a disaster. He stammered and stuttered throughout the entire presentation. He also presented the first argument. It was clear that he was not prepared. His counterpart buried him in the rebuttal. In fact, the other team was better prepared and more organized than his team. His team was disorganized. In fact, two of his team members left critical information at home. He didn't bother to make copies for himself. He was a hopeless mess.

Since I ran this like a motion hearing, rather than a true debate, I took the importunately to ask him questions and challenge his argument. Seeing that he was somewhat defeated, I used kid gloves, but I ripped through each of his arguments, tearing them apart piece by piece. I pushed him to concede that his position was ineffective and ill-conceived. I had images of a submissive dog that rolls over and shows its belly when it knows it is not the Alpha dog.

Needless to say, his team lost. I asked two colleagues to act as co-judges so that there would be no complaints that I was being biased. My colleagues commented to me privately and to FW that his presentation was weak. Of course, he was not happy about any of this.

Ironically, Monday was the same day that the students had to evaluate me. After we finished, I gave the students the evaluations and left the room. I had a feeling that FW was going to blast me. Well, on Tuesday, one of my students from that class stopped to talk to me about an assignment for that same class. After we finished, she said "I thought you should know that FW was really mad that he lost." "He keeps whining that it was not fair that his team lost." She went on to say that he was so angry that he refused to fill out an evaluation! Can you believe that!!! If he wanted to get the last word, he could have done so with the evaluation. But no…he was too focused on being pissed off. What an idiot!

So today, I asked the class about what they learned from the entire exercise. FW was the first to raise his hand. He said that he should have prepared better than he did. He did not realize how difficult such an exercise can be. He apologized for not doing his best. Hmmm...

I still think he is full of shit. I still think he is immature snot. And I think I won this round.