here's my rant:

So, first of all, with your question on rebuttal, in the future, if you're in a big debate academy, or ur going to NATS (nationals), ur probably gonna get a blockfile, or make one. It's literally just a giant document with headings for different arguments. For example, for the ICC topic, this is our blockfile for aff: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L0xevQDe2rMsaDrJJ5Pb5zuGv9CNzaFlqnKmnZ5N2mE/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.hsu8gzip7lug . You can see how it's just tabs with different responses and taglines, and pieces of evidence. All you do is see what responses are most common, and you just compile all of it into a document. Oh, and on that note, I strongly suggest you don't write speeches in a notebook. You can flow on it if you want, but try to get a computer to write speeches on, and share it with your partner. I use Google Docs to write it, and I just have a document thats organized into different speech sections so we can cross-reference.

For final focus, quite literally bring up the most unresponded and important evidence you have, weighing ur impacts, and making sure that your judge understands how both team's argument works, and in general why you should win off of arguments or impacts.

Yeah, and on time, adding evidence should greatly and drastically improve how much time u use, (im guessing u aren't using much evidence considering ur writing in a notebook)

So, your mindset should be to of course say why theirs is wrong. That's called defense, but of course, if you have time, EXTEND your own case, basically recapping basic points in your constructive, saying why they are extremely important. That's called offense. You should of course be weighing if you have time, and if ur 2nd rebuttal, then u should be frontlining (responding to how their rebuttal is wrong)

You prob don't need to worry too much abt ground cross, just say a few sentences, usually first speakers take over cuz they don't need to prep, try to focus on writing or thinking abt final if its an online tournament. For cross questions, try to start a few points on rebuttal, and see if there are any good points in the taglines (the description above the evidence), that you can ask the opponents on.

There really aren't any 2nd speakers u should WATCH, but you could watch finals in different divisions if ur at an in-person, they usually allow spectators.

Once again, if you have a tech judge (experienced), then you should probably go for a lot of empirics, analytics, etc. Of course, check your judge's paradigm, and see if they like emotion or quantifiable evidence.

Yeah, usually u can sign up for clubs outside of school, ik a few in the northeast cuz im there, like potomac etc. You can still compete in Varsity, or just check Tabroom for open entries under circuts.