What a difference a week makes!  My first week in Boston, I did nothing but study for my actuarial exam.  In my second, I’ve gone out of my way to try to do something different and exciting every evening, and am in the middle of a weekend full of adventures, all the while sympathizing with all my fellow interns who can’t join me because they’re studying for their respective exams.  Actuaries stereotypically spend their lives studying until attaining fellowship in an actuarial society, often around 25-26, then get to enjoy a moderately low-stress career (with the exception of those who go into consulting).  Many of us thus push pretty hard to try to finish up our exams, but it sure feels good just to have some time to do things I feel are fun!

Among my favorite excursions from this week was a trip to the Museum of Fine Arts, conveniently less than 5 minutes from my dorm building.  Less than 6 months ago I would have held very little interest, patience, or appreciation for an art museum, but I found myself bounding eagerly from exhibit to exhibit, telling my friends the significance and context for different paintings and movements and even explaining the symbolism in some portraits to confused strangers (they did ask me first, don’t worry – I’m not that obnoxious).  What brought about this drastic turnaround- an especially influential art history course?  An encounter with a famous painter?  The discovery of my own prowess as an artist? (ha, I wish).  No, the thing that transformed me from total art naivety to a person of whom my fellow interns say, “ask him; he’s the art expert” was, in fact, quiz bowl.

Many people know I am on the Penn State Quiz Bowl team and have played since my freshman year of high school.  I often talk of my weekend travels to tournaments and spout off random facts to anyone who will listen (note: please tell me if this ever annoys you; I promise it’s unintentional).  To those who are unfamiliar with quiz bowl, it’s a competition of primarily academic knowledge spanning various subjects.  Questions are pyramidal, meaning they start off difficult and get progressively easier throughout the question, and whenever a person knows the answer, they may ring in.  There are both team and individual components, making it both a collaborative and competitive atmosphere.  As it happens, one of the subjects covered in quiz bowl is art.  I usually play as a generalist, with a bit of knowledge across many subjects, but this is not an advantageous strategy on competitive teams where I compete against teams with specialists in each category.  Therefore, this semester, both myself and my younger brother Vince (also an avid quizbowler) dedicated ourselves to trying to “learn art”.

Throughout the semester, we took a variety of approaches towards our goal.  We visited museums, read books, did online research, scanned databases, and compiled extensive study materials.  We saved different paintings as rotating screen backgrounds for our computers so that we would have daily exposure to the paintings, and even found ourselves discussing how to identify different artists over ping-pong games.  Though far from a master of the subject, I would say just by studying collections of artists, movements, and works, I became far more familiar with art than most of the general populous.  I still have a ways to go before I am satisfied with my art knowledge, but walking through a museum explaining the difference between American and European art movements, how a portrait of George Washington relates to the turning point of the American Revolution, identifying the subject of a painting as the artist’s nephew, talking about the special connections I’ve built over a painting, or realizing I can describe my favorite movements, favorite artists within each movement, and favorite works by each artist, I feel like I’ve made substantial progress towards becoming more well-versed in the category of art.

Many people think of quiz bowl as just memorization of a bunch of useless facts.  Admittedly, I have had my days where I’ll just sit down and memorize the Senate, or a list of authors and works, or even of artists and paintings.  But the objective of quiz bowl is not to award memorization prowess, but instead depth and breadth of knowledge.  One can only get so far with lists, as the game is designed to award not those who can only recite facts, but those who actually understand information.  This makes it a lot different than most trivia games, whether it be television quiz shows, bar trivia, or board games, which are much more focused on minute facts.  Quiz bowl skills can often be transferred to these formats, as many successful Jeopardy players are former quiz bowlers, and mainly through quiz bowl I’ve been able to win all the Liberty Mutual intern trivia challenges so far (there’s some sort of trivia competition at least once a week… I love this company).

People often ask me why I enjoy quiz bowl, what I can find appealing in “studying for fun”.  I’ve been able to identify a few answers to this question.  First, I love competition, and for someone with an alarming propensity for broken arms, quiz bowl is a safe, fun outlet.  Second is the response I always give people when I try to recruit them for the team and they tell me they’re “just not smart enough”.  You don’t have to be smart to play quiz bowl (beyond a certain baseline).  What you must have, though, is a passion for learning.  People who love art, or literature, or chemistry, or philosophy, can succeed in quiz bowl because they enjoy learning about their favorite subjects, and will thrive when given opportunities and incentive to gain more in-depth knowledge and then use their passion in a competitive setting.  My last reason is that I truly believe that quiz bowl helps make me a more well-rounded, diverse person.  Though my central objective in “learning art” may be to answer questions in a game, it has helped me gain greater appreciation of a very important form of human expression, and also of those who study and partake in this artform.  It has forced me to think about different world eras and areas and how these different times and places can be reflected through works of art, and of the stories of the artists who demonstrated their inner selves through their works.  It is in this way that quiz bowl spreads appreciation for knowledge and learning, and is the true heart of the reason why I love quiz bowl.