The thing I love so much about PLP, is how it’s constantly pushing me further, and further out of my comfort zone with every project. But this one, may have been the project with the highest level of discomfort that I’ve had to face, for my whole highschool career. I’ve never been a strong pubic speaker, my teachers know this, my parents know this, and I know this. So I saw “Master Debaters” as a way to enhance my abilities, and come out of the project being more confident on the podium. In many ways I did, but in some, I could’ve done much better. This is my experience becoming a Master Debater.
Going into this project, the only experience I’d ever had with debating, was a short French project in grade 6, and watching Donald Trump interrupt Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden live on national tv. What I’m getting at is that I don’t have much experience. However, my grandpa was a politician in BC for basically his whole life, he was even working in the parliament in Victoria for a combined 14 years. With this project, I saw a way for myself to continue on his legacy in some way, and the thought of that, is something that drove me to giving my all into this project.
But before I could properly debate for myself, I had to watch other people debate. So, early on in this project, we watched the movie “The Great Debaters” with Denzel Washington. This movie, mainly being about racism, and having an all black cast, showed me how important emotion can be in a speech. The movie also re-birthed my love for Forest Whitaker, and I’ve watched Rogue One and Black Panther since then.
The assignment I enjoyed completing the most for this project, was the “Greatest _____ Ever” speech. For this assignment, we were told to write a paragraph about the greatest “something” ever. It could be about literally anything, you just had to make it convincing. So naturally, as the music connoisseur that I am, I decided to write my paragraph about the “Greatest Musician Ever”, and no it’s not Kanye West. I decided to write mine about Quincy Jones, the third most winningest musician in Grammy’s history. In this text, I go into great detail on why Quincy is undoubtably, the best musician in history, by going over his many achievements and accolades, his stent as a producer for Michael Jackson, his contributions to great movies such as E.T, and The Italian Job, etc. This assignment really birthed my new found love for the written word, and was a big step forward for me compared to past work. If you’re interested in what this text looked like, check here.
Once we were finished with our writing, it was time to chose a debate topic. Unlike most, I found my debate topic, and partner rather quickly as Fraser Wagner addressed the class asking if anyone wanted to debate him, and I exclamed “I’ll do it”. That action sparking the curiosity of most in my class as Fraser is considered one of the smartest in the class, and I’m, simply put, not. But then again, I saw this project as a way to grow as a public speaker, and I wouldn’t be able to accomplish that debating Max Louie on why “Santa’s Elf’s should get more health benefits”. Another reason I chose to debate Fraser, is that his topic proposed to the class sparked my interest. Fraser has always been known in my class as “The Green Guy”, in the sense that he’s always talking or posting about the environment, pollution, clean energy solutions, etc. So, when he came before the class, pitching the idea of him debating that “we should sacrifice our economic growth for the betterment of the environment”, I saw that as a way to educate myself on the important topic, and a way to try and beat Fraser at his own game.
One of the parts of this project I enjoyed the most, was researching my debate topic. This process continued to fuel my interest in the subject, more and more after every read article. I eventually came to a point where I was asking my mom for her login info to “The Economist” so I could find more. At this point, you can imagine, I was feeling pretty confident in myself. I started writing up the first draft of my speech, and unlike most of my previous writing, I was feeling very good about my Intro. I started delivering it to my peers and they really liked it as-well, so i started the working on the rest of my speech, and I was feeling very confident in it once again. All throughout this, every time I’d run into Fraser he’d try these little “intimidation tactics” hyping up his working, telling me im going to lose, trash talk at its finest 😐. These didn’t really seem to phase me in any way though, if anything, it just made me more annoyed.
The only part of this whole ordeal, where I didn’t feel much confidence, was during our rebuttal prep. Trying to figure out what exactly Fraser would talk about during his speech was pretty nerve wrecking for me, because I had a feeling he’d try and be super unpredictable. But nonetheless, I came up with a list of points I thought were pretty valid, and he’d most likely talk about, and wrote down potential counters for those points. To my surprise, when I asked for critique on my rebuttal prep from my teacher, all she said was “✅” and “it’s at a proficient level”, so I must have been doing something right.
Something I really enjoyed doing throughout this project, was practicing my speech with peers. For the first time in my highschool career, I actually wanted to show my writing to friends, and acquaintances alike. From the get-go, I felt really confient in my speech, and that’s a very rare occurrence for me, but that feeling of confidence would also lead to my downfall.
The dreaded day of the exhibition came, and I felt pretty good coming to school. I was dressed sharp, I felt great about my rebuttal, my speech was the same as it was, I didnt think anything could go wrong. We set up the room, got all the snacks, printed out our speechs and rebuttals, the day was going so smoothly. Then, is was time for my debate. As I was arguing the negative, I had to go second, and that might have been the thing that set me off my game. Not that his speech was any better than mine, I just got into my own head, and by the time he was getting off the podium, I just felt uneasy.
I got up to the podium, my intro went amazingly, but once I got past it I started stumbling over my words like CRAZY!! Everyone was noticing obviously, and I eventually slipped up so bad, that I accidentally let out a silent F-bomb. But I soon realized, it wasn’t as silent as I thought, and everyone in the student section bursted out laughing. I was basically screwed for the rest of my debate. That might have been the biggest regret of my highschool experience. But I can’t beat myself up about that.
This project, even with the “Incidnet” that happened, thought me countless valuable life skills that I will be using for the rest of my professional life. For that, I am greatful to Ms Madsen, Fraser Wagner, my peers who gave me feedback, and above all, Elwood Veitch for giving me the genes of a (soon to be) amazing writer and speaker.
Leave a Reply