The judges did good? That’s Debatable

 Another year, another exhibition. As per usual the lower grades had their blue sky projects out and were scurrying around preparing like frantic mice. The only preparation we were doing was worrying. 
 A few weeks prior we had been told our final project was to be a debate and at this news I could rest fairly easily as I am a very confident public speaker and debater. Our first task was doing an impromptu persuasive speech about a random topic. I volunteered first for our group and got the topic “Disney movies should be banned.” After giving the speech the rest of the groups went and I tied for first with Jackson which is not much of a surprise. After a few more weeks of doing stuff like this I hadn’t lost any of my confidence but knew that I would be faced with a challenge with every one of the groups. My group was Jayden and Gabi.

Our first showdown was against Kirby, Stanfield and Mike. Once we got up to the podium it ended up being mostly just me and Kirby debating. We got the audience vote and one of the judges which was enough secure the win. I got a ton of compliments which felt great but the whole experience was tainted by certain things. 
 First I will say what I thought went well though. I liked the way during the debates you would have to win over both the judges and the audience rather than focusing on a single way to pamper. I also really liked the topics that were used as they fair for the most part and could see myself arguing each point effectively. 
 Now the things I don’t like about the night. First was the fact that a lot of people were beyond stressed and worried to the point were I would say that I took some of the fun out of it. I feel that knowing the person opposite you may be stressing out and super nervous despite the fact nobody showed it was a little sad. Of course there is also the fact that one of the judges messed up a lot but I won’t talk about that it’s not entirely relevant. Also the teams were not really fair when it came to confidence in public speaking. I did think the overall structure of the debate was good though and I would 100% do it all over again.
 Next time I would let everyone choose their own teams and if they were unfair then move the players around. Apart from that I would suggest doing it over multiple classes instead of in public if that is possible. 
 As for preparing I didn’t do much except studying lord of the flies and becoming extremely familiar with the concepts. This is because I knew that for me it’s better to have key concepts rather than be bogged down in individual ideas that I feel compelled to use because I wrote them down a few days before. I prefer to use my knowledge and skill at debating to win.