Two days later, still a little down from this devastating but Pyrrhic defeat at ChGK Nats, she wonders how many tournaments would be necessary for them to use the MAK rating method to get to the threshold for qualification. Or pray that the Quantum Computers get to said threshold, in which case the Quantum Computers are deemed to have clinched the berth before Nats. And then, for Worlds qualification purposes, we will be deemed the national champions. But honestly, given our position on the MAK rating leaderboard, we don't have time. I wonder if the Quantum Computers would ramp up their tournament schedule in an attempt to train for Worlds, though, Patricia ponders the implications of the alternative methods to qualify for Worlds.

At night, after the Congressional debate session ends, Catria makes a confession to both Ainslee and Patricia regarding, well, the implications of rehab for her future career.

"People in the club love my cooking, yes, but... I don't think being a chef is for me anymore" Catria bursts into tears.

"Why?" Patricia asks her, whose only information on Catria as an outpatient relates to her cooking and her involvement in Congressional debating.

"It might have taken me a while to realize that, but I would be constantly triggered by alcohol if I returned to culinary school. Even more so given the employment landscape" Catria explains, still crying.

Even though so many restaurants hiring from culinary school hold "bring your own" liquor licenses, for the cuisines I do best, they don't use cooking wine of the variety that led me to check into rehab. They use the drinkable variety. Not necessarily the same ones they sell, but drinkable wine nonetheless, Catria reflects upon alcohol triggers.

"I believe that we're overdue for this. It has been several months since you started outpatient treatment. We want what's best for you, outside of twelve-step programs, so that you can be given a new start in life. And a drug-free life, too. Just don't take everything we say for definitive career counseling" Ainslee tells Catria, while Patricia has another question for Ainslee.

"Speaking of career counseling, I am wondering if we have adequate access to it. I didn't feel it was appropriate to start talking about that until now since, you know, inadequate education would make career counseling much less useful to those who would benefit most from it" Patricia comments on career counseling.

"We already refer those who are unemployed but exempt from screening to local employment services Catria was found to not require remedial action" Ainslee continues.

Outpatients typically have either educational or professional commitments, so the demand for career counseling among the patients is mostly for inpatients. That said, I believe that everyone would benefit. I'm happy that Catria doesn't require remedial action, however, Patricia reflects on access to career counseling.

"You do understand that relapse risks will restrict what kind of college is safe for you to attend, if you feel like college is for you. It would be best for you to do undergrad as a commuter student" Ainslee warns her patient.

"Why? I thought drugs and alcohol, in college, were mostly in Greek organizations and in the chemistry department!" Catria retorts, when the suggestion to attend college as a commuter student was made.

"Even though college is supposed to be a time to explore your interests, you will get more out of college if you have a clear goal. But let's start with your academic records" Patricia adds to this conversation.

"I went to culinary school because I believed I would have gotten a job faster. With college, I would have needed to wait longer, and often jobs asking for a college degree also required graduate degrees to obtain. The culinary school I dropped out of didn't ask for the SAT or ACT, but I don't think it's a GPA issue. There's only one institution that makes any sense for me to attend then: UMKC!" Catria starts yelling at the leads of the Congressional debate club.

Catria reminds me of the people on the debate team back in my day in high school. She might not be the smartest girl in the world, but assuming that she is right in that UMKC is not a GPA issue, then the SAT or ACT will be an issue because she didn't take either one, Ainslee muses while Catria's extracurriculars are reviewed.

"One last thing, Kate. Just get to a twenty-five on the ACT and you're good to go for attendance. Please take a diagnostic ACT: in a sense, it's similar to the screening test in use" Ainslee warns her patient.

"The threshold for not needing continuing education was set to the benchmark for college readiness for a reason! Even though college may not be for everyone, being college-ready from a literacy and numeracy standpoint will ensure that you can function in daily life" Patricia explains upon hearing about the screening test. So I am not worried about the ACT.

"But if you want to keep tuition at a minimum, I'd say aim for twenty-eight on the ACT. Since your score won't be released in time for the Fall deadline, wait for the spring one. You have about two months to study, since the nearest date is in June, and don't delay in registering!"

UMKC has 3 tiers of automatic merit aid, with her grades she was eligible for the second from the get-go. But Ainslee, based on her facial expression, was a little surprised to see Catria get grades in the top-25% range. Usually kids in the top-25% are pushed towards college these days, and most kids at her talent level in Congressional debate would be in that range, or higher. In tournaments, she would have been unremarkable, but let's not kid ourselves: even unremarkable entrants in local Congressional tournaments tend to lean top-heavy in their respective schools.

"There are majors you should avoid, chemistry being the most obvious" Ainslee then advises her patient, before Catria starts crying upon hearing this.

"Chemistry was my strongest STEM subject... now you're telling me I shouldn't major in one of the few things I've been consistently good at?" Catria keeps crying.

Maybe... maybe with the scholarship, college could prove cheaper on a yearly basis than cooking school has been for me! Catria muses, but she needs to run the estimate into UMKC's cost estimator to know whether it's actually the case. Chemistry has some similarity to culinary arts, so I think it's worth studying if the aim is to get my life back on track.

"The problem would that you would then be able to brew your own alcohol or drugs" Patricia then tells her.

"You have valid concerns. However, I know chemistry is so much more than drugs, and presumably the two of you know this as well" Catria responds to Patricia's concern about drugs and majoring in chemistry.

"You're right; however, chemistry is one of those fields where, while you can get jobs, what jobs there are will mostly require graduate school of some sort to get" Ainslee makes an additional comment. "So once in college, keeping your grades up and getting internships in whatever field you would like are a must. It's not going to be easy but it's feasible"

As much as I would have liked to believe that people as smart as even Catria would get drunk, alcoholics at her intellectual level or higher tend to drink alcohol out of stress. So really, having brains don't shield people from addictions. But Catria gives me hope for the other outpatients, Patricia looks at the patient's hair, dyed blue, before Ainslee gives Catria a list of resources for her patient to study for the ACT so that she can get a chance at scholarships.

"Thank you. I will start studying for the test and sign up for it as soon as my parents are aware of my college plans" Catria then leaves the psychiatric hospital.

On Friday night, the team is assembled once again at Yakiv's home for another online ChGK tournament, where Patricia debriefs the team on what went wrong at Nats.

"Before we start playing today's tournament, I believe we lost at Nats because you guys trusted me far too much for our own good! That said, I don't think I should relinquish captaincy like this, after all, I earned your respect long before that, since you pinned all our hopes for the ChGK Worlds on me since I started playing" Patricia harangues her teammates prior to the start of their games.

"Us, trusting you too much?" Bohdan asks in a tone of voice that makes him appear as if he doubts their level of trust in her. "You only need to know how you earned our trust. You're the brain here, Patricia. You're the one allowing us to take questions in tournaments we wouldn't have otherwise!"

"How do you think Mikhail earned the captaincy of the Quantum Computers?" Vira asks her captain.

"I've never been one to pay attention to ChGK players' gossip. On top of that, we never interacted with other teams much, outside of state and Nats anyway. However, Mikhail is also a very erudite kind of player, and it's possible he earned the Quantum Computers' respect the same way as I earned yours" Patricia responds to Vira's question, struggling to keep her calm.

"So many teams of all levels, ranging from those who occasionally play in bars to those who play at Worlds, seem to believe intellect is the currency used to earn teammates' respect, and naturally the smartest players are given the captaincy in such environments" Yakiv adds to this comment, not wanting to appear insensitive. "However, there are two common snags that occur with that sort of leadership, and Patricia hinted at one of them"

The majority of adult players will never play in IAMG-sanctioned tournaments. However, for a tournament organizer, complying with IAMG requirements for consideration for MAK ratings might require more statistical legwork, and getting an appeals committee as well as a clear procedure for protests, Vira has a flashback, triggered by the comment about teams playing in bars.

"Sure, having a captain whom the other players respect, both in-game and out of the game, is important. But the best team captains are not masterminds. Maybe once or twice, a brainpower can be a good captain, especially if, like you, that player listens to other players early in a question-answering cycle" Bohdan gives her pause.

"You said there were two main snags Patricia could have run into as captain" Sergei asks his uncle, a little befuddled.

"The other major snag teams giving captaincy to their smartest players hit occurs when they can't resolve in-game disagreements between players. The best captains would then be controllers since captains should normally moderate in-game discussions" Yakiv adds to this discussion as it starts to flare up.

It's obvious there's more to captaincy than earning the respect of the other players! It's easy for a player who regularly allows a team to take questions they wouldn't otherwise to earn players' respect. However, a captain the other players don't respect is doomed, Patricia reflects on the implications of this loss at Nats. However, she never got the opportunity to dig deeper about Vira; she kind of feels that Vira was the most Worlds-obsessed of the gang. She then slams the table:

"Remember what I said at Nats? About how we need to either win a major international tournament to qualify for ChGK Worlds or gain enough MAK points to get into a sufficiently high rank?" Patricia asks her teammates, her face going red.

"Yes, but it turns out it's not entirely true. Hopefully the Quantum Computers, in their training regimen, ramp up their tournament schedule, perform well enough and then gain enough MAK points to be qualified under that basis, and then we'd qualify" Vira announces such in an attempt to cheer up the team for their loss at Nats.

"Are you crazy, Vira?" her brother asks her, in a tone that underlies his emotional state. "The Quantum Computers would need to climb up to the top-sixty or so by September first, likewise so would we need; do you have any idea how much of a grind that is? For them or for us"

The post-Nats leaderboard showed the Kansas State Team rise by a whopping 206 MAK points through its second-place finish at Nats, putting them in the top-120 for the first time.

"No" Patricia, unwilling to obsess over the MAK rating, answers, while she never needed to prioritize it.

"While we may have steadily climbed the leaderboard since July the Fourth, with almost weekly tournaments, the hard part is getting from our current position, one hundred and twentieth place, into the top sixty. Currently, the Quantum Computers are eighty-seventh. If I'm not mistaken, this means we need to play two tournaments per week until September first and perform well in all of them" Vira explains to the rest of the group. "Maybe even three on the week of Memorial Day or July the Fourth"

"That's a lot of ChGK to be playing, maybe a little too much for some. I don't want to make our quest for Worlds consume us to no end, to cause it to neglect other areas in our lives. If it takes another year to get to the Worlds, so be it. After all, I am still a little raw to the game, I am experiencing growing pains as a player..." Patricia then responds to Vira's plan, rolling her eyes at the sheer amount of time and money to spend in playing ChGK.

Tournaments being, on average, $30-$100 a pop to enter, depending on the level and country of origin of the organizers (the Ivy League series of ChGK tournaments being the most expensive). Vira proposed entering ChGK tournaments to the tune of 2 per week, as opposed to 1 currently. They are making a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether this push for higher MAK ratings was worth the price they need to budget.

"Vira, surely you have realized that Sergei and I both have student loans to repay and tacking on an extra thirty to hundred dollars per week for ChGK would make it harder for us to repay our student loans! Not to mention your own mortgages, if any. Or the costs of traveling to St. Petersburg for the ChGK Worlds if we actually make it. Speaking of the ChGK Worlds, why are you so obsessed with getting us to the ChGK Worlds?" Patricia asks a Vira, exasperated by her obsession about getting Kansas to play at the ChGK Worlds, because, in her mind, the team essentially was Kansas as far as ChGK is concerned.

And even if we get there, I don't want the players to suffer hardships because of their dreams. I really, really hope Vira knows how much it would cost to get their family to the Worlds, and saved up for it, Patricia sighs, while looking at her student loan balance. From the $86k her debt load was when she started working at the psychiatric hospital, her loan balance shrank to $62k especially since she made bi-weekly payments.

As for Sergei, he graduated with about 1/3 of the debt Patricia did, but since he didn't earn as much as she did, he couldn't pay it down as much as he would have liked, he still has $21k in outstanding debt balance after contributing as much as was possible in his IRA (individual retirement account). Which obviously wasn't much. He, too, stayed with his parents, as Patricia did.

Since she lived at home with her parents, saving up a fund for a down payment for buying her own home going forward, ChGK Worlds, as well as paying down her student debt became much easier.

"You must understand that our lives, both in pre-war Ukraine, and here in Kansas, were lives where we went around doing unremarkable things. I played ChGK in my youth, but I sure as hell wasn't anywhere near as good a player as you are. I feel like I didn't accomplish a whole lot in life, beyond the degree of course. I want to honor my family, the sacrifices they have made during the siege of Mariupol to get all three of us to safety" Vira explains the other 3 players not in her family, while crying when mentioning her parents' sacrifices.

"Oh, I'm sure our parents would have been proud of us if they were still alive, even if it meant representing a different country at ChGK Worlds than the one we were born in" Yakiv continues.

"As for me: by qualifying for the ChGK Worlds for the US, I'll then honor the sacrifices made by the US in the Ukraine War. Also, I decided to remain in Kansas because it was a much cheaper place to live than California or New York" Bohdan then explains what drives him to get on the Worlds bandwagon.

"I understand what drives you all to want to get to Worlds, and the only reason why we are even asking ourselves this is because we already beat other teams confirmed at Worlds in other tournaments..." Patricia comments on why her teammates are questioning whether to push for Worlds.

"You made us realize one key limitation of the MAK rating: a high rating is more of a reflection of playing more often, provided a team plays decently, than it is of team quality" the 6th player comments on the push for a higher MAK rating.

"Yeah, we beat higher-ranked teams at both Slavyanka Grand Prix and several stages of the Ivy League" Sergei comments on the team's performance as of late.

"Which is why I don't expect the Quantum Computers to attempt the grind to the top-sixty, which, according to most predictions, will be where the line is drawn for qualification based on MAK rating" Vira adds.

Obviously, my parents aren't playing ChGK, they knew Bohdan's and Yakiv's families from their respective jobs. My dad works as a realtor and knows Bohdan from realty, my mom, works in the automotive industry and Yakiv is a heavy equipment operator where she works. As for Vira? She works as an ESL teacher in some elementary school, Sergei works in CSR compliance and the 6th player works as an accounts payable clerk... Patricia reflects on how they even knew Bohdan and Yakiv in the first place.

"But can we all agree that it might be best to postpone our push for the ChGK Worlds to next year, so that we wouldn't be stressed out?" Patricia asks the players.

"Yes!" the other players wholeheartedly agree on the main flaw of the MAK rating.

And then the tournament starts in earnest, with the team competing against opposition mostly coming from Western Europe, similar to the Marseillaise last July.