<p>My First Debate
Are you two varsity? I innocently asked my first debate opponents as I walked into the room with my partner for our first ever debate in our career.
Yes
Oh.
We, needless to say, lost the match. </p>
<pre><code>As I walked out of the room, the realization that I had lost my first ever debate match overwhelmingly depressed me, but my mind suddenly drew a blank as mental images rushed in, as if a movie reel playing my journey of founding Speech and Debate club as a clueless freshman, painstakingly fundraising and building the club as a Sophomore, and being elected Team Captain of our schools first ever Speech and Debate Team as a Junior.
I remembered going classroom to classroom, handing out flyers for a fundraiser I had organized. I remembered the hours spent in my coachs office, trying to make ends meet at the last second. I remembered spending an entire summer learning Lincoln Douglas debate so that I could teach it to the new debaters, only to learn at the beginning of the season that I would need to learn and teach Public Forum debate instead. I remembered my free fourth periods spent trying to learn the foreign language called Public Forum Debate so that I could teach it correctly during practice. I remembered having to call scary Asian parents and beg them to volunteer as judges because we were short. I remembered the pride I felt when I watched the debaters who I had taught share my passion for debate.
I threw myself so completely in Speech and Debate that I may have overreacted sometimes when anything related to it fared poorly. I realize now that this is because in the early years of my high school career, Speech and Debate was synonymous with hope in my mentality. In those years I felt myself being buried under the rubble of my broken life: my relationship with my dad worsened, my mom got heart disease, I was scared by the prospect of having to find a new niche in high school. For all those aspects of my life that I felt were out of my control, I made up for by trying to control the success of Speech and Debate Team.
In that transient moment, it truly hit me how far along not only the team had come, but also how far I had come. I realized also that a rout should not dampen my spirits: the loss made me realize how much Speech and Debate Team had changed who I am. And surprisingly, I like the person Speech and Debate made me. Through Speech and Debate I found my ability to fight for my own success, I found a group of friends who shared my love for Speech and Debate, and I found the beauty of inspiring others with my passion.
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<p>And besides, we learned so much from the varsity debaters that we won our next few rounds. Maybe failure really is the great great great grandmother of success.</p>