3 Lessons From Certamen
Certamen is a classics-themed quiz bowl. There are four categories in the game — Latin grammar, myth, history, and culture — and teams are composed of four players who specialize in each subject. Some famous Certamen tournaments include Harvard Certamen, Yale Certamen, Duke Certamen, BLS Certamen, State Forum Certamen, and Nationals Certamen. During the previous academic year, I competed in both Harvard and State Forum Certamina. Most recently, after qualifying at State Forum, I competed in Nationals Certamen at the National Junior Classical League (NJCL)’s National Convention. I was the grammar specialist for all of these tournaments and here are the lessons I learned from my participation.
Pressure Annihilates Practice
Certamen, like most quiz bowls, require players to press a button on the buzzer machine to answer questions. Of course, this system means that whoever buzzes first gets to answer the question first; players are encouraged to buzz before the question is fully read by knowing when enough is said. This action is coined “hyper-buzzing.”
I had many practice sessions during the school year and over the summer. Under little to no pressure, I would hyper-buzz the questions and get most of them right.
However, when I stepped into the first round of nationals, I couldn’t get my mind to hyper-buzz. Even when I knew all the information, I still doubted pressing the button. I just couldn’t get myself to click the button because I wasn’t sure if I could quickly use the information under the emotion and time pressure; once a player buzzes, they must answer the question within 5 seconds. Even worse, when I did get the courage to hyper-buzz, my memory declined under the same pressure, and I quickly forgot what I was required to translate. Both of these issues combined and fed each other to create a cycle of unconfident buzzing. There were many questions that I knew the answer to but had to concede to other teams. My notebook was completely soaked with sweat from my hands.
However, despite this pressure, the top teams — Florida, Massachusetts, and Texas — were playing just fine. I decided to observe what made them play so well under such crushing stress.
It’s Really Just a Game
What differentiated the top three states from me was that they were playing a game. They were having fun. I, on the other hand, was
fighting a total war. A war with the moderator, the questions, and myself. In every preliminary round, I had a cold face with a frown, focusing on the game. I was taking this really seriously. Meanwhile, the national Texas and Florida teams were making jokes with the moderator, laughing at mistakes, and simply having fun. It seemed as though it was no more than just a game for them, and after round two, I knew they were right. This was no more than just a game. I gave Certamen so much mental significance that I was constantly burdening myself. Before I could even think about answering the questions, I was thinking about a thousand other things.
Before the semifinal round, I sat outside the building, meditating. In order to reduce the expectations and pressures, I had to reduce the game’s mental importance. Ironically, I had to be accepting of losing. I closed my eyes and visualized many versions of how the round could go. I visualized getting every single one of my hyper-buzzes wrong and our entire team scoring nothing for the entire round. Then, I visualized getting some of the questions right but getting most wrong. After a while of concentration, I understood that every edition of losing was completely fine; losing would change nothing about me and the work I put in, make me most astute in the future, and ultimately never alter all the fun I had at the NJCL convention.
It was with this complacency that I walked into my semifinal round against Texas and Virginia. On the first question, Texas got the answer
because, again, although I knew when to buzz, I wasn’t confident whether I could work with the information in my head. However, this time, despite yielding the first 20 points to my opposition, I felt calm because I had already visualized and “experienced” this moment before in my meditation. While Texas was answering the first question, I began to realize something about competition.
Stealing Souls
During the summer, before attending NJCL Convention, I read David Goggins’s autobiography: Can’t Hurt Me. One of the lessons he preaches is stealing souls, where people should take powerful actions to dismantle their opponents’ mental state and confidence. I already knew this concept; I tried to employ it in my track and cross-country races. For instance, I tried to steal souls by making big surges right after my second lap in my 1500-meter races. If done successfully, I would easily get into the heads of my opponents who were suddenly left behind me. If such a move is done successfully, it is then important to feed on the stolen soul by using the small win as a catalyst for mental strength. When I realized that nobody was keeping up with my surge in my races, that gave me more power and motivation to either keep up the pace or go even faster.
Of course, players will fight to steal each other souls. In moments of competition, no player, runner, or person will go down easily without a
fight. In track, a lot of the other runners surged with me and made sure to let me know that their footsteps were right on my back. During cross country, whenever my teammates and I tried to go in front of runners to “box them out” behind us, they would fight equally as hard to do exactly the same to us. Whoever can steal the other team’s soul first wins.
That’s why the first five questions of Certamen are so important. There are 20 total questions in Certamen, with a score check every 5 questions. Most often, soul-stealing happens in the first five questions. When the score difference seems to be too much on the first score check, the round is already over.
In my semifinal round, it was a fight with Texas to steal each other’s souls. with the newfound calmness, I hyper-buzzed on the second toss-up question and got it right. On toss-up question three, I buzzed again and got it right. My teammate, Maura, also got a question right. Whenever a player buzzes and answers a toss-up question correctly, that team gets to answer two bonus questions for 5 points each (a toss-up question is worth 10 points). However, our team was not able to get most of the bonus questions right because we either questioned our original answer too much or ran out of time.
This meant that, although we were starting to take Texas’s souls by getting most of the toss-up questions right in the first five questions,
we weren’t able to fully steal and feed on it because we didn’t go all the way through with the bonus questions. The score at half-time was 35 for us, New Hampshire, 35 for Texas, and 0 for Virginia. I knew at that moment that we had already taken the souls of Virginia and we were on a soul-stealing battle with Texas.
For the next five questions, we quarreled with Texas in the same way. We would get a question right, but Texas was really close behind us and not letting us devour their souls. By halftime, the score was 75 for New Hampshire, 65 for Texas, and 30 for Virginia. As I predicted, Virginia was out.
The next five questions determined everything. Our team had actually lost our history specialist, Tyler, because of an ambiguity with what level he was allowed to play; the NJCL stated that his Latin level was too high to play with intermediates, even if he only had 2 years of Latin experience. While fighting to get the smallest edge in front of each other, team New Hampshire couldn’t answer history questions that made up around 25 percent of the questions. Texas got toss-up 11 right and we suddenly went from trailblazing to trailing. With more pressure on the line to get questions right, it became harder to answer the other questions. Texas stole our souls and began to get every single question right.
By question 19, it was 75 for New Hampshire, 205 for Texas, and 45 for Virginia. If we had capitalized on the first 3 bonus questions and quickly stolen their souls, I imagine it would have been unlikely for Texas to get in the rhythm after halftime. The round not only illustrated the importance of soul-stealing but how to do it effectively: when it seems like you are beginning to steal souls, don’t grow complacent and expect the trend to continue. This is the moment to really take full advantage of the small victory and push even further. If complete annihilation of the soul doesn’t happen, other teams can quickly sting back.
Being weak under pressure made me my greatest opponent, and understanding that losing was outside of my control and ultimately didn’t matter made me shed some of the pressure and begin to focus and appreciate the game much more. Under this clarity, I realized the importance of stealing souls alongside when and how to properly devour the soul: set the tone for the rest of the game from the beginning and really go all the way when the tide comes to your favor.