Today
I tried to make today a good day, but as the day proceeded everything seemed to be getting worse. I'm trying to revive my day with some evening friendship, reflection, and productivity. The friendship part means keeping online on AIM and attempting to be the most useful/amusing/helpful/etc. person I can be for my friends. The reflection part means writing here so I can maybe get some inspiration. The productivity part means I already finished all my homework due tomorrow, and hope that blogging here will give me some ideas for this week's comic and college apps, and what-not.
After school today, I went to Rubios with Vince. They got these crazy new touch-screen soda dispenser machines. There are flavors of Fanta I never knew existed that taste oh-so-good. Now I want more soda-- the glucose empowered goodness! Anyways random appreciation here for Vince for being able to laugh at any of my sometimes lousy jokes and for being a very stable friend. You don't meet any friend by shoving someone you don't know and saying "What's your problem?" to someone who looks nice that you guess would understand the humor behind the action. Ahaha... interesting story. Interesting people.
Drama--! I don't think its proper to report any drama here unless things work out well, then I'll be glad to report the whole story using substitute-names to protect identities (unless the people really want me to put their names). I guess having a more private journal is useful for recording anecdotes that one might not want to publish at the time for privacy's sake, but can be made fully anonymous later. I think I'll try to start to keep more of a personal-type journal in edition to this blog, but any epiphany I'll likely be very eager to share here.
(might add more later tonight-- we'll see :D )
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September 20, 2009
I had written about my experience in debate on a burst of inspiration at 2 am on a tired evening to respond to one of the UC application's prompts. I later decided my swim experience would make a stronger statement, so I quit this one, but of course saved it anyways.
Here is a personal statement that I decided not to use describing my experience with debate team:
On September 19th 2009, I competed in my first debate competition. It was a last minute decision to participate-- my teammate and I had only begun preparing one week earlier for a competition that most teams take many months to ready themselves. Upon first hearing of the competition, just over a week before the event, I was reluctant to participate. Entering the competition represented a significant time investment and monetary cost, and I had not previous experience in formal debate. Nevertheless, I decided to make the investment and enter the competition. I was amply rewarded with a fulfilling experience.
Preparation was an arduous process. On top of the daily work load of six AP courses, I had just been hit by a car on my bicycle a few days before, and had been emotionally shaken by a cold rejection from my school’s homecoming dance. Friday night, after school, my partner and I, and another partner pair met up with our debate coach. We had been expecting at least six people to represent our school on the debate team, but only four of us were willing to make the commitment. The meeting with the debate coach was quite insightful-- in addition to receiving some helpful pointers on how to present an argument or refute an opponent’s claim, we came to a healthy realization of how unprepared we were. Following that meeting I resolved to read an 150 page long packet of primary sources regarding our topic, “Resolved: United States policy on illegal immigration should focus on attrition through enforcement rather than amnesty”, much of it being legal jargon and other seemingly unintelligible material. Saving trees (I didn’t print out an 150 page document), and consuming much of my time, I condensed this document into a 20 page or so document summarizing all of the main arguments and providing easily accessible statistics for use during the debate in a manic struggle to do what other teams have been doing for months into less than a week. I was fortunate enough to have a very able partner-- throughout the preparation process, my communication and teamwork skills were significantly improved as under the pressures of time restraints, my partner and I were forced to work with utmost efficiency and effectiveness.
Loss of sleep, sacrifice of free time, and extended study hours proved to be very worthwhile. Two novices, myself having no previous debate experience, my partner only having competed once, emerged victorious in three out of four of our debates (and still strongly believe we should have won the one we did not).
Debate competition was very much a microcosm of what I have thus far discovered of life. The formal structure of the “Public Forum” format we followed reminded me of the order needed to achieve an effective discussion in case of debate, and an orderly environment in which to succeed in terms of society. The “crossfire” section of each debate, the portion in which each team is able to “fire” questions and responses back in forth showed the competitive nature of our capitalism society and the adaptivity and improvement it fosters. The format of the competition, requiring each team to argue both sides of the issue, twice the “pro”, and twice the “con” encouraged educated analysis of multiple facets of controversial issues. Participating in the SoCal debate forum competition proved to be both a practical and enlightening experience, enhancing my communication and time management skills while giving me a deeper appreciation for the opportunity presented in our society, encouraging me to examine multiple perspectives on issues, and the demonstrating the importance of adapting.
