What I learned from doing Quiz Bowl

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2024-05-09 21:30:08

I did Quiz Bowl throughout my time in high school, and looking back on it, it was a pretty positive thing to do! In this blog post, I want to make a list of some of the life lessons I have taken from Quiz Bowl.

If you know about Quiz Bowl, just skip to the next paragraph. For the uninitiated, Quiz Bowl is a team activity where students compete, typically on teams of four, to answer questions about the world. There are questions on physics, philosophy, mathematics, chemistry, literature, history, economics, videogames, and pretty much every subject. The format of the game is simple: the moderator reads a tossup and then players can “buzz in” (no talking during tossups). If they get it correct, they earn 10 or 15 points and secure a three question bonus set for their team, with each bonus question being worth 10 points. Talking between players is allowed during the bonus questions. If a player gets a tossup wrong, their whole team is locked out from buzzing during that tossup and they can lose 5 points. If you’re interested, you can find the full rules for the NAQT style here.

I was kind of surprised to learn this because Quiz Bowl is an activity based on facts. You either know the answer or you don’t. But it turns out that for some reason, encouraging your teammates and having what we call “good team chemistry” helps a lot. My team has played against some teams that were much higher ranked than us (e.g. Hunter from New York City, Thomas Jefferson from Virginia, Mira Loma from California), and in many cases, if our spirit was higher, we could beat them even if we knew less.