Written By Jason Stansell

You’re a new competitor in Speech and Debate. Everyone around you seems to know far more than you. It’s intimidating, and they seem to expect so much from you that you don’t know how to do. You begin getting more and more nervous, palms sweaty, everyone seems to be judging you, and that’s long before you start competing in front of a judge. And then you mess up. You find out that while you’ve believed you’ve been quoting Martin Luther King Jr., it turns out the website you got the quote from had misattributed a quote by Malcom X. Now everyone is going to know you’re a fraud and don’t belong here. “Why did I even sign up for this?!”

Guess what? Most of us in Speech and Debate have similar stories. Personally, I leaned so hard my freshman year of high school into performing the graveyard scene from Hamlet for Dramatic Interpretation. I didn’t listen to my coach that Hamlet might not be the right choice. I didn’t know that it’s likely that the judges might not understand Shakespeare enough to give it a fair score. I personally understood Hamlet. I loved Hamlet. Surely, that passion would carry me through, correct? Nope. An entire year wasted performing a piece with which I could never win… or so I thought back then. Sure, I didn’t really win much with the piece, but I learned a lot about competing. What worked, and what didn’t work, how to cut, how to write an intro, how to take a loss, how to take a win, how to find myself. While I felt the world was against me, it wasn’t. It was me finding my place, stepping into the world.

Every toddler has to stumble before they can walk. The same thing comes in Speech and Debate. You start, at least mostly, unaware of what lies before you. So many people seem to have expectations of you that you cannot fathom, when all we actually expect is for you to learn and grow. We’re giving you the tools you need to find your own way, not telling you how to get there, or even what “there” looks like for you. As you learn, you grow and develop the skills used in Speech and Debate, and we hope that you’ll take them with you for the rest of your life.

Such as the ability to speak up for yourself and to think independently, critically, and creatively. To be able to analyze something you’ve read and be able to understand the text, or at least understand how to use the tools to be able to understand. To be able to speak in front of others without fear, or at least the ability to manage that fear.

It’s intimidating, I know. I still get nervous speaking in front of a group of people. However, I am no longer afraid to do it. Every time it gets a bit easier, and it will for you, too. You will mess up; we all do. Even seasoned pros mess up on the regular. It’s not failure, it’s life. You will learn to accept those mess-ups as well, and keep on going. You will grow. 

We all stumble at first, and we know it’ll happen to you, too. No one is judging you for that. No one except for yourself, but that will change. Anything your coaches tell you, or even your teammates, is to encourage you to get back up, and keep trying, keep learning. This world is a big place, and these skills you learn take time. But once you learn them, the world might just seem a little bit smaller as you begin stepping into the world.