| again, it is sunday. again, i am updating
so. i went on my first debate tournament. it started on friday. it ended at 12:30 last night. it was absolutely awesome. friday morning, the ppl who were going on the tournament didnt have to go to class at all. we met in mrs. duesler's (the debate coach, commonly referred to as "the dues", pronounced "deuce") room and copied each others cases. (a case is basically your arguement. in L/D debate, you're given a resolution and you have to write cases, or arguements, in support of the resolution, known as the affermative or aff, and against the resolution, known as the negative or neg.) not me. i wrote my own cases. and good ones they were, too. so we were all in the room, all twelve of us debaters. 6 boys. 6 girls. my being the oldest girl. all the rest of the girls were freshmen, and all the boys were juniors except for two sophmores. then, mrs. dues appears and so we think we're ready to go. NOT!
vasavi kanneganti suddenly remembers that she's competing in poetry and prose interperetation and has neither a poem to read or a story to present. so, we have to wait an hour so that she can find two sutable pieces. while she's doing that, we're deciding who goes in what car. after long discussion, it was solved like this: one car had william (jr), will (soph), luis (jr), taylor(soph) and william's mom. the other car had me, noah (jr), alex (jr), marie, maria, vasavi, emily (all freshmen), and mrs. dues.
hoo, buddy. the resulting 2 hrs of driving was filled with completely random conversations and discussions about music, philosophy, movies, religion, and whatever else one of us thought of bringing up. noah, alex, me, marie and mrs. dues were the ones mostly talking, since the other girls just sat in the back and were rather self-contained amoung their little group. i knew alex previously from cross country, and had met noah briefly, but i had never talked to marie before, so the four of us chatted a lot about a lot of things. then, we got to our hotel and almost got hit by this guy that swerved out through three lanes of traffic and two parking lots just to avoid a red light. we changed into nicer clothes,(since debate competions are preferably formal dress) and went to the competition.
i was entered in two events. L/D debate and impromptu speaking. i love impromptu speaking. you go in a room with 7 other people and a judge. the judge hands you an envelope. you reach in, pull 3 slips of paper out that have random topics on them and then you pick one. the judges gives three minutes to think of what you're going to say and then you have to give a 5-7 minute speech on your topic without using notecards or stopping. absolutely fun and funny. my topic was a quote by jack handy on the domination of other star systems by our solar system. haha.ha.hahahahaha! i drew in star wars, and the sci fi channel, and star trek, and battlestar galatica, and stargate (whoa. i know a lot of sci fi). i spoke really reallly well for 5 minutes. seriously, i had everyone laughing. then, just after i had passed the five minute mark, this guy came in and started talking to me. he was like "hey, sorry, didnt kno you were giving a speech here. well, youre doin good. keep it up. sorry." it. threw. me. off. i totally lost my train of thought and had to stop talking for a few seconds. but i found it again and kept going for another thirty seconds. that pause cost me the win. the judge wrote on his ballot (a sheet of paper where the judges rank your performance and give constructive critiscm, used in every event) that if i hadnt stopped, i would have won. instead, i got third. only the first two of every round advance (called "breaking") so i was done with impromptu for the day. still, not bad for a first-timer. ill qualify next time. right after i finished speaking, marie bust in and said "c'mon! L/D's starting." so i had to run, get my notebooks with my cases, find my sheet with my name on it, find my room, and wait. first i had to wait for the judge. then, i had to wait for my opponent. after 30 minutes, the judge finally said "he's not coming. alright, youi win by default." yes! my first ever win in debate and i didnt have to do anything! : ) so, for the next two hours, i wandered around the school where the meet was being held. i watched the rest of my team's debates throught the windows. then, at 6: 30 i had another debate.
my next debate, well, we wont talk about it too much. i kicked tail, but the judge was a friend of my opponent, so, you know how that goes. more long waiting, and then we went out to eat.
eating out with the kelly debate team is an expeirience to say the least.thats only way to describe it that i know of. you see, the funniest people in school are on the debate team. and they were all in fine form on friday night.
saturday, i had to get up at 6 am after going to bed at 12:30, leave at 7, and spend the next 17 and 1/2 hours at a school. yeah, the tournament went that late. i didnt have anything until 10 though, so i hung out until 10 rolled around and i went for my next debate.
this one went way better than the last. now that i actually knew what i was doing (mostly) i could better evaluate my opponent's case and attack it. i still lost, since my opponent was really really good, but i didnt go down without a fight. jeff (my opponent) was extremely nice and gave me a ton of pointers and tips. we talked for about 20 minutes after the debate was over. (he wasnt all that bad looking either) he said that i really shoud keep doing debate because he couldnt tell that it weas only my second-ever formal debate until i told him.
so, i didnt advance in L/D or impromptu. now there was nothing else to do but watch and support my teammembers. four of them "broke". noah advanced in L/D. will advanced in extempt (which is basically impromptu, but instead of random topic, you'regiven a specific political issue and you have 30 minutes to research your topic and write a 7-minute speech on it. catch is you can only research it using newspaper articles you brought with you and since you dont know your topic ahead of time, well, you have to bring a lot of things.) alex advanced in impromptu. (he's hilarious.) the team of will and luis advanced in pf.
PF stands for Public Forum. it is a combination of every different type of debate there is. and it is incredibly fun to watch. the format goes something like this: there are two teams of two people in each round. there is a resolution which they knew and researched before the tournament started. they get in the room and flip a coin to determine who will argue the aff and who argues the neg. then, they flip again to determine which side speaks first. after that the sid ethat won the coin toss stands up and gives a 5-7 minute speech on their side of the issue, be it aff or neg. then the other side stands up and gives another 5-7 minute speech on their side. then there is a three minute crossfire period. crossfire is the two teams sit there and ask each other questions about their side. this is what makes pf interesting, since there are no rules as to the type of questions you can ask and people often start yellling at the other team trying to be heard. then, there's a five minute rebuttal by each side and then another 3 minute crossfire period. then another two minute rebuttal by each side, then they're done.
will and luis are the best pf people out their. they're funny, intelligent, good speakers, always have the most unbreakable cases and never lose. at this tournament, i sat in on two pf rounds. the first one was funny because will and luis's opponents didnt know what they were talking about. the second one was finals. it was so tense it was unbeleiveable. they were going up against a team that was almost as good as they, and it was a hard fought battl. neither team would back down, and the crossfire sections were absolutely vicious. the girl on the other team went so far as to insult luis's intelligence AND his hair. (he has long, black curly hair that he is very proud of.) but will, that boy is something else. there was only a small fraction of time left in the crossfire period and so he asked one of the opponents a very vital question. (the topic of the debate was isreal and palestine's prosepcts for peace. will and luis were argueing that they had improved, and the opponents were argueing that they had not.) he asked (after presenting statistics that showed an overwhelmoing move towards peace in the veiws of the palestinian and isreali peple and also a great decrease in violence) "does not the evidence of an increasing shift towards peace as shown by the decrease of violence mean that peace is being sucessfully encouraged?" his opponent said "yes, but.." will had the most evil and exultant grin on his face. he jumped up and said "HA! YOU AGREED! WHICH THEREFORE MEANS THAT YOU SUPPORT MY CASE! THANK YOU! WE WIN! GOOD NIGHT!" and he slammed his notebook down on the desk and sat just as time expired. needless to say, they won.
some memorable quotes from the tournament:
luis: BOOYAKASHA!
will: THANK YOU! WE WIN! GOOD NIGHT!
noah: see this face? this face doesnt care
jeff (my opponent): america is a socialist society....
alex: this is what i think of fortune cookies! (throws cookie against the wall so hard it bursts into a million peices.)
(this and the next one go together) william: why dont you just get a shirt the says "loser" across the front of it?
alex: it doesnt come in black.(alex wears black 24/7)
will: yippee!!!! (he was way too hyper and went leaping across the parking lot. now what would you do if you saw a 6ft 2in guy in a suit and tie, carrying a briefcase, go leaping across a parking lot? uh-huh, that's what i thought.)
vasavi: well, whatdoya expect? i had never read the poem until the start of the competion.
maria: wha? (she spent half the tournament sleeping on a talbe in the school's cafeteria and was always surprised when someone woke her up.)
we would up being at the school in houston until 12:30 saturday night because noah made it all the way to finals in L/D and got third place. then, mrs. dues dragged us out to eat. so, by the time i got home it was 2 in the morning. now, during all this my phone has been completely dead. i was dead tired. and i just plain forgot to call home and tell my mother that i would be getting home extremely late. so, i got home, she's worried sick and extremely mad and i am now grounded because she doesnt trust me. so. |
