Since extemporaneous speaking is a limited preparation event, it is crucial that extempers be as organized as possible. This is very crucial when it comes to filing. Extemp files that are unorganized are not useful and greatly hamper the chances of an extemper to do well at a tournament.
To help novice and veteran extempers alike, Extemp Central presents five tips that can make your file boxes more organized and effective.
#1: It might be a good idea to put your files in alphabetical order. Even if your files are divided into categories (USX/IX, divided into geographic regions, etc.), alphabetical order is an effective method of quickly locating the files that you need. You shouldn’t have to sift through all fifty of your files on Latin America just to find things on Argentina. Under an alphabetical system, this file would located near the front of your Latin America section.
#2: After each round of a tournament, make sure that you refile the files that have been pulled out of your extemp tub. This might seem like common sense, but there are a lot of competitors that do not do this. Sometimes tournament questions overlap. This is especially true for U.S. foreign policy questions. If your table is covered with files after round one and no one refiles them, you are going to have to dig through that mess to find what you need later and most importantly, the mess is only going to become bigger as the tournament progresses.
#3: If a file gets too big then you need to subdivide it. Determining whether a file is too big is a very subjective judgment, but a good brightline might be less than forty articles. If you happen to only have one folder for all U.S. economy issues then that’s a really bad idea. When you subdivide, keep the general category and sub-category on the folder tag. For example, a subdivision of your economy information might be a file on the housing crisis. This folder could look like this: “Economy-Housing Crisis.”
#4: Don’t be afraid to clean out your file box every few months. Are you really going to need that New York Times article on Afghanistan right now if you clipped it back in April? Probably not, unless it has more analysis than other articles in your file box. For issues that are constantly in the news, like the 2010 midterm elections, the Afghanistan war, and economic issues the most recent sources are likely going to be your most valuable in rounds. So it doesn’t make a lot of sense to keep tons of old stuff around. It clutters your file box and makes them heavier, which is going to take a toll on your back.
#5: Random pieces of paper, notes, etc. need to be thrown out of your file box. Remember, you are not allowed to have pre-prepared materials with you in the prep room so you don’t want to get disqualified. Also, if you have any quote books, almanacs, books, etc. you want to place them near the front of a file box. This gives you a quick place to access them. Additionally, any folders that you have for AGD ideas, that contain jokes, political cartoons, or other funny material should be at the front of your box as well.
Bonus: It is a really good idea to put the articles that you cut into folders. Dumping uncut magazines, newspapers, journals, etc. into your file boxes is of very little use to you. As I always say, what you create when you do that isn’t a file box. What you are creating is a mess. Uncut sources are going to take you longer to access during a round and it is more efficient to just have all of the articles you need in a few folders as opposed to ten or so different publications, which you will have to sort through to find the articles that you are looking for.
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