December 2041, Kansas City, Kansas. In a meeting of the newly formed Kansas City, KS chapter of Achievement Addicts Anonymous, Patricia, one of the volunteers, starts by asking achievement addicts to introduce themselves.

"Welcome to the first meeting of the KCK chapter of Achievement Addicts Anonymous. If you're here, you're powerless over your lust for achievements. But before we explore what made you feel powerless over overachieving, please introduce yourselves, the volunteer asks the attendees. I am Patricia Halpern"

"Stephanie Stagg"

The other achievement addicts introduce themselves, seated in a circle. Several of the addicts are, like the two women, professionals of a wide range of ages and industries. The volunteer then asks the addicts in a clockwise direction to talk about what makes them feel powerless over their addiction to achievements. It so happens that Stephanie's turn comes before Patricia's:

"I feel like I peaked in high school" Stephanie states to the other addicts. "I feel like, no matter what I accomplish now, or even what I did in college, it won't measure up"

"What do you mean, you peaked in high school?" Patricia asks her.

"I faced the Red Army in Moscow..." Stephanie answers Patricia.

"I assume you were a theater actress playing a German spy in a WWII school play" another addict comments upon Stephanie mentioning having faced the Red Army in Moscow as if it was the highlight of her life.

"You're probably unfamiliar with the international quiz bowl landscape. Nowadays, the Red Army is associated with the elite of Russian quiz bowl" Patricia explains to the other addicts, gasping when they hear about today's Red Army being mostly a quiz bowl entity. "And the choir to a lesser extent"

And more generally, the Russian military's involvement in cultural activities, but mostly confined to the choir and intellectual games. While the Red Army, in the ChGK (What, where, when) context, doesn't perform very well, because of the Russian general staff's insistence on the usage of active-duty military personnel, in quiz bowl, beyond branding, the military mostly manned game rooms in tournaments.

"Kansas won the NASAT, or National All-star Academic Tournament, senior year, and I was playing on the Kansas team, with the winner going on to play at the World Cup in Moscow. And the title game was, well, Russia vs us" Stephanie explains to the other addicts.

"The NASAT being a high school quiz bowl tournament, Stephanie refers to the high school division of the Quiz Bowl World Cup. I played at the World Cup myself but in college" Patricia adds to Stephanie's explanation.

As tempting as it is to talk about how I scored 4 powers during the game against the Red Army, I don't think it would help the other addicts understand why I feel powerless over achievement addiction. Or talking about the World Cup qualifiers junior year, where Kansas finished fourth in what amounts to a girls-only NASAT, Stephanie muses while another achievement addict makes a scathing remark:

"Stephanie, you don't sound like you're powerless over achievement addiction, more like you're powerless over flashbacks from your glory days! What I am powerless over is the desire to reach ever higher goals" an addict comments on Stephanie's story.

"When you win something that big in scope in high school, it's easy to feel like you reached the peak of your life. While I graduated debt-free from college, that's all I have to show for winning the Quiz Bowl World Cup!" Stephanie retorts to the addict's statement.

"However, I am myself powerless over achievement addiction. In high school I used to be the star of the scholars bowl team, in college I took up the combined BA+MHA program at Tulane, thinking that I could get a better job than what I could have had with the BA alone... and graduating with honors from both in five years. Not to mention that I became the quiz bowl team president when Imélie graduated during my junior year" Patricia gives out a blurb about her own dealings with achievement addiction.

"Why are you powerless over your addiction to achievements then?" Stephanie asks Patricia.

Did Patricia volunteer, and form, the Kansas City chapter of Achievement Addicts Anonymous because of her own achievement addiction? an addict muses, believing something is not right with her. Then again, Patricia draws a blank, and lets the other addicts share their respective stories about what made them feel powerless over their addiction to achievements.

"Here's a reminder not to consider the triple-As as a substitute for proper mental health care, only as a supplement. I am not a licensed therapist, but I know care must be taken for an achievement hangover not to turn into a more damaging addiction" Patricia explains to the other attendees. "However, I often feel like whatever I do is not enough, that I want to ensure that the needs of patients and addiction counselors at the psychiatric hospital are met, and often healthcare administrators have a limited idea of what patients go through"

"This is not powerlessness over achievement addiction, this is trying to act differently from other healthcare administrators! While I am sure you listen to the employees... you're right: hospital administrators don't always care about patients" Stephanie points out.

I am not sure what to expect. Will they actually believe me if I said that I was somehow anointed as the Savior of Kansas ChGK? And that my ChGK team is poised to win the state championship on Mardi Gras. However, my last ChGK tournament was an online one where we faced off against the "Central Team of the Army", Patricia muses, struggling to think of an answer.

"In high school, I had my reservations about playing ChGK, which would feel like a team riddle contest, but upon returning here after college, I decided to play that game and it was during my last tournament that I realized how powerless I was over achievement addiction! I began formulating a plan for getting Kansas to compete at the ChGK Worlds, involving ever-harder sets. But I also started questioning why I would even want to compete, and represent the US, at the ChGK Worlds" Patricia answers the other addicts' concerns over her achievement addiction. Each new achievement feels emptier than the last.

"The only time I ever heard about ChGK was through a quiz bowl teammate in high school" Stephanie tells them. "The nephew of an Ukrainian refugee apparently"

Yet, Patricia knew that teams could play several levels of ChGK tournaments, and there was only so much a team could do without climbing the tournament ladder. And the so-called "Central Team of the Army" is supposed to house the best two players each from the Army, the Navy and the VVS, or Russian Air Force. Or the "Red Army" to the ChGK-playing Russian diaspora in the West. The Red Army, which represents the Russian military in ChGK, was beaten by... some Kansas team without any name recognition? Patricia gets a flashback from the last tournament. About how players in the military historically had no real success in ChGK, and also didn't have a whole lot of players to begin with. About the Red Army having far more name recognition in the ChGK world than its actual track record would otherwise warrant.

Then the addicts start getting in more detail about the activities they engaged in that caused them to feel powerless over achievement addiction. They did so, feeling that perhaps the nature of the activities might shed some light on their powerlessness.

"As therapeutic as talking about what makes your feelings of powerlessness happen, there are several questions I believe we need to answer before we can see much progress in your recovery" Patricia announces them before asking. "Oh and one more thing; now that we all admitted our powerlessness over achievement addiction, I strongly advise against undertaking recovery without another person you can trust, and preferably a therapist of some sort. And, for the love of God, do NOT consider your feeling of powerlessness as a diagnosis. If you're familiar with Alcoholics Anonymous' twelve steps, this person is what is referred to as the higher power. First question: is how you are spending your time reflecting your personal values and the life you want to create?"

After the addicts are done with answering the first question, Patricia then asks a favor of Stephanie, feeling something is fishy about something Stephanie said earlier:

"Stephanie, may I speak to you in private?"

"Yes"

"I hope you have a good reason for you to have lied to your fellow achievement addicts about your involvement in ChGK. We're both organizing State on Mardi Gras. You said that you only heard about ChGK once and through the nephew of a Ukrainian refugee. Why did you hide your role in staffing and then organizing ChGK-State?"

"I... I didn't think the other addicts would understand anything about ChGK, only you would have. But we both saw fit to mention our educational pasts because we believed that to be key components of our respective addictions and addicts would understand" Stephanie answers Patricia.

I was waitlisted at my first choice, Notre Dame, but I knew that most kids at Bishop Miège didn't obsess with college the way Patricia might have had. So while I did get in at Villanova, their financial aid wasn't that good, so I went to K-State instead, Stephanie then had flashbacks of her own dealings with the college admissions process.

"And I believe one of the addicts watched the WWII high school spring theater play in which I portrayed a German spy during Operation Typhoon. The play is about Germans and Soviets playing cat-and-mouse in the streets of Moscow in 1941"

"Stephanie, all our previous interactions between us dealt with ChGK, and you go out and say that nothing in your life compared to playing quiz bowl at the World Cup? And you also did theater? What do you work in then?" a puzzled Patricia asks Stephanie.

"I'm a health insurance claims adjuster. I feel like I need to save up money for the next step first..." Stephanie tells her.

Patricia then asks them for their contact information and sends eight questions that give the addicts pause. But Patricia realizes time is running short and she might have jumped ahead of herself in an attempt to help these addicts. Perhaps making an inventory would make working with a higher power easier. That, even though some addicts seem to prefer calling each other out about the inaccuracy of their achievement addiction assessments rather than working on their own addictions, she thinks while she is reminded of her upcoming dinner in person with the rest of the team.

---------------------------

Which is also the date of her next ChGK tournament. Speaking of which, before the first game begins, on a Friday night...

"Privet. (Hello) Remember, everyone: this is not going to play out like our last tournament last week. And... I have a confession to make. The only reason why I'm even on this team is because of my achievement addiction" Patricia announces to the rest of the team.

"What do you mean, achievement addiction?" Bohdan asks her, gasping at this declaration, not expecting Patricia to even mention achievement addiction.

"I'm a little confused. How can you be addicted to achievement?" Yakiv asks her.

"Later, please. This tournament runs on the lowest difficulty of questions we expect out of the state championship on Mardi Gras, of which I'm one of the organizers" Patricia cuts short as the tournament is about to start.

In regular-season open tournaments, 3 games are the norm. Online tournaments can be held synchronously or asynchronously. In the latter case, participants have a time frame and must agree not to disclose questions. Speaking of the state championship, I am not sold on Krasnaya Armiya (KA) as a question supplier since, historically, KA is pretty hit or miss when it comes to harder ChGK question sets. However, in quiz bowl, KA is a poor man's NAQT, Patricia muses, while realizing that maybe an Ukrainian housewrite would be a better fit over KA at that level. After that tournament ends...

"That's surprising from you to say you are an achievement addict. When I first knew you, years ago, I believed language was the main barrier" Bohdan tells Patricia.

"Yes, Patricia, you were anointed the Savior of Kansas ChGK for a reason! You have drive, more than simply erudition or intellect! We only managed one top-twenty at the national championship before you started playing, but with you, we might have a chance to qualify for the Worlds!" Vira, another player, comments. "We beat the Red Army two weeks ago..."

"The one thing the Red Army is known for, in ChGK, is being the yardstick for what an average team playing on average difficulty sets mean. That is, if you can beat them, your team is above average. But just because we can defeat them, doesn't mean we can win the US' berth at the ChGK Worlds" Patricia warns her teammates about not resting on their laurels.

This team is a dynasty by Kansas standards. We won the last 8 state championships, including 1 with Patricia as the captain, Bohdan, Patricia's predecessor as the team captain, muses about the team's track record. realizing that Kansas has very few ChGK players. Most of them came to Kansas as either Russian or Ukrainian refugees; Patricia is one of the few that belonged to neither ethnicity.

"Without you, we wouldn't play at the level we did here" Yakiv tells her. "Hard to believe you're an achievement addict!"

"What makes me feel powerless over achievement addiction is that, in everything I do that I feel has any actual substance, I chase ever-harder achievements, grades, performance evaluations, but each of these achievements feels more and more hollow" Patricia then tells Yakiv, hopefully answering his question about achievement addiction.

Bohdan then brings out the cranberry kissel, a sweet fruit soup, and serves it in cups. At the same time, Yakiv takes out the bottle of vodka. The other 3 players start mixing vodka with kissel, but for some reason, Patricia eats her kissel before she even thinks of drinking vodka.

"Don't forget about the charity tournament next month for the Partnership to End Addiction! I'll be the tournament director, and I'll write the questions! This tournament will be an online synchronous tournament. If you have a friend who wants to try the game, or have loved ones who struggle with addictions, I invite them to take my spot for this online tournament!" Patricia announces, before taking a sip of vodka.

I can't let my team down... hell, if I let my team down, I may as well let Kansas down, too. However, did I pick up ChGK because the knowledge I accumulated by playing quiz bowl for all these years was of use to me there? What good is playing ChGK at this level? Is ChGK a matter of state or national pride for me now? Patricia ruminates and starts crying not long thereafter.

Patricia's face then heats up and becomes as red as the kissel she ate earlier. Then her thoughts turn to the content of the tournament invite as posted on LiveJournal, especially the subject distribution on a per-game basis. Which is mostly going to be like ACF Nationals except that each set is going to be 12 questions as opposed to 20. But of course! I can always re-use the questions in the packets we submitted for ACF quiz bowl tournaments while I was at Tulane! However, doing this would mean picking out the easiest bonuses while remaining mindful of the content distribution as well as re-writing the question for it to feel more like a ChGK one. Straight-up using tossups from even ACF Fall, let alone ACF Regionals or Nationals, but leaving out the "for 10 points" clue is not going to fly in a charity ChGK tournament! Might be a little easier than state championship questions. But repurposing the other questions and then use the resulting set amounts to having people play on packets that are nearly as hard as ChGK Worlds. Doing so right out of the gate is not going to fly either! Patricia keeps thinking about the choice of questions for that tournament.

"However, if Patricia really is struggling with achievement addiction, this means we need to step up to the plate. She gave us an opportunity to qualify for the ChGK Worlds, we fell short last year, we finished one point shy of the national title" Sergei, the fifth player, comments on Patricia's achievement addiction.

"Sergei, how are we to do that?" Vira grills him, blinded by her excessive faith in Patricia.

"My achievement addiction began with scholars bowl in middle school, alongside with quiz bowl later on, and as soon as I started playing, my addiction kicked in. But I found out most of the techniques used to get better at quiz bowl also carry over to ChGK. Since Vira believes that we might become national champions, I advise you to look at past sets of various countries' national ChGK championship sets, as well as past ChGK Worlds sets publicly available. And high school and collegiate quiz bowl sets, if you feel your knowledge has holes, with more recent sets being prioritized for both. Answers and even parts of questions tend to be reused, and take notes on what you don't understand" Patricia explains to the other 5 players.

"Now that we have a better idea of how we are going to play at ChGK Worlds... thank you, and dobriy vyecher (good night)" Sergei then tells the players before leaving.

The following day, before dawn, Patricia starts reviewing old submissions made by Tulane during her time there for the purposes of entering ACF tournaments for bonuses to turn into ChGK questions. Much to her surprise, it didn't take much for her to turn a quiz bowl bonus part into a ChGK question. And then translate the 36 questions to Russian, but she keeps the English version for later use.

But she feels harried in the process and she feels a visceral need to do exactly what she told her teammates regarding training for the ChGK state championship. Without realizing that her quiz bowl experience made it easier, much easier to follow through on the second half of the training regimen.

Yet, the first half of the plan is her priority, and priority is given to studying older ChGK national championship sets, starting with English translations of the British and Canadian ones of the past 5 years. Which are promptly forwarded to her teammates, and the following week, she moves on to national championship sets of past host countries and champions of the ChGK Worlds, feeling these sets are insufficient. Followed by the ChGK Worlds sets themselves one week later, and they take part in asynchronous tournaments in the meantime. Alongside synchronous tournaments such as the final of the Slavyanka Grand Prix. At the end of it:

"There is one last thing remaining to finalize, for the first Saturday night of January: the appeals committee. I need three of you on the appeals committee to comply with IAMG regulations" Patricia asks her teammates.

"Stephanie can't on that day" Sergei sighs. "I think Lanisha should play: it would make her a better referee on Mardi Gras"

"Although you directing this tournament is going to hurt us should we play, the damage is already done. I may as well ref that tournament" Bohdan announces.

"Same here" Yakiv and Vira both tell her.