Local Sixers and Dropping Standards

I read a fellow blogger’s posting today. He had posted a picture taken of him and a group of students in a quizzing session. Both of us are part of a mailing list for trivia quizzers. Though the list is for quizzers from Pune, I am also a member of this list. I was searching through the Yahoo Groups site when I came across this list. These quizzers meet at the Boat Club lawns in Pune. I don’t know for sure, but it is my understanding that they are/were from different colleges in Pune. Somehow, reading about their travails in popularizing quizzing in Pune and their bemoaning of the drop in Pune quizzing standards (in the recent group mails) somehow makes me feel nostalgic. We had a quiz club at College too. And we were not just good, but the best around Trichy. And the last two years of our college life, we also went through the same cycle of complaining of the lack of standards in the juniors who had recently started coming to the quiz clubs. But these same low-level mortals took our gauntlet and added three more Festember Overall trophies to the three that we won when I was at college.
(For all of you less informed mortals, Festember is the cul-fest hosted every year at the Regional Engineering College, Tiruchirapalli.)
But what I then thought was a local sixer is in fact a beauty that has perhaps cleared the top of the commentary box. COEPians, your first job now would be to get in more school crowds into the Boat Club scene (I mean, if there aren’t any now). That’s perhaps the only way to improve your standards. Quizzers are not born; they are made. Your only action now would be building your quizzing standards from scratch.
I actually fell quite good about Chennai and the QFI-C (Quiz Foundation of India, Chennai chapter) whose members have been the pillars of Chennai quizzing, whether it is in participating or in hosting them. The QFI meets at the Staff Training College of United India Insurance (off Nungambakkam High Road, adjacent to the MOP Vaishnav College for Women) in Chennai. The very existence of a meeting spot where all the basic facilities for a good quiz are available readily is perhaps one good reason why Chennai quizzing standards have risen along with the QFI. And not to mention the enthu put in by the grand old men of Chennai quizzing (I don’t want to mention names, solely because there are so many and I don’t want to miss any of them) and the support from the management at the United India Insurance staff college.
So what you guys need to do is to catch them young. Host a couple of school quizzes and announce the existence of a quiz club ( I mean if its not known yet). Watch the crowd grow. Now you might probably see an initial drop in standards and a drop in attendance after the first quiz posted by a regular quizzer, but that happens at the QFI too and this is a recognized way of weeding out the “bored” from the interested ones.
Viva Shan Quiz Club, Viva QFI, Viva quizzing…..

And now for the Quote of the Day....
"Only when you are challenged, unsafe, out of your zone, can you find self-knowledge !" (C.K. Prahalad)