Mia Lasic-Ellis

One day last fall, after club tennis practice (drama), one of the captains, Mitra Hu-Henderson ’28 (queen), told me about Bowdoin Quiz Bowl. As the social captain of the quiz bowl team, Mitra explained that the group meets on the top floor of Coles Tower on Monday nights for trivia. As a loyal “Jeopardy!” lover, this sounded like a fun opportunity for me to stay sharp and meet new nerds. In addition to all these benefits, quiz bowl helped me learn to take chances.

Since then, I’ve attended every practice and traveled with the team all over the northeast for different tournaments against schools like Yale University, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). At the start of any quiz bowl match, there’s a toss-up. It’s us versus them, no team collaboration, first participant to buzz and get the answer right gets ten points, wrong answers get docked five points. Although I’ve competed in dozens of quiz bowl matches this year, I often find myself second-guessing my intuition during toss-ups. The combination of anxiety surrounding my own answer and worry that my opponent may answer before me puts me in a paralyzing stalemate. Ask any Quiz Bowl member, and they’ll tell you the worst feeling isn’t taking the courage to buzz and getting the answer wrong but hesitating to answer and your opponent getting the answer you knew all along. I’m not afraid to hurl expletives at myself or my opponents (Gromulus and Lancelot) should they swoop in and take what should’ve been mine. The worst feeling, though, is not taking what is yours (in this case, the quiz bowl question). I say this not because I have found a hidden remedy to second-guessing yourself, but because, through quiz bowl, I’ve seen how the pain of regret largely outweighs a brief pang of embarrassment. Even if we were to look statistically, a loss of five points, while it stings in the moment, is still less than the possible ten points you could gain if you try.

This was a helpful realization for me because I think this sense of courage would be useful in other parts of my life. In high school, I didn’t think I was on the same level as MIT or California Institute of Technology students, so I didn’t even try to apply. At the moment, I thought I was saving myself from feeling ashamed or inferior to my high school classmates. Retrospectively, though, having the courage to apply would’ve made me a more informed applicant on all my subsequent applications and boosted my confidence in my abilities. Who is to say I wouldn’t have been accepted? At that point, the only person telling me I wouldn’t get in was me. And I was right! In the future, I want to have the courage to avoid these self-fulfilling prophecies, which only keep me in a state of insecurity.

There were so many times when my teammates and I got points over MIT and Yale quiz bowl teams when I thought to myself, “These girls are not that much smarter than me, why didn’t I apply?” I want to avoid such regrets in the future; I’d much rather shrug at a minus five than sob over what could’ve been a plus ten.

Neiman Mocombe is a member of the Class of 2026.