This weekend I competed at the first Florida Gulf Coast Catholic Forensics League speech and debate meet this year. I competed in congress and had a very successful meet. I wrote 8 bills about topics including a ban of hydraulic fracturing, establishing a mission to the Palestinian authority in East Jerusalem, renegotiating NAFTA to include more protections for workers, and eliminating paper currency.
I had a very successful competition, receiving high scores on all the speeches I gave. However, aside from the quantitative success, I found this to be my best meet so far since beginning Speech and Debate three years ago because I was able to research and write many speeches about topics which, for many of them, I was unfamiliar with before beginning. I not only wrote the most speeches I'd ever written for a one-day meet, I also believe the delivery of the speeches was my personal best. I was able to work on a number of weaknesses I had in the previous season, and build upon skills I'd been building the past few years to improve the "speech" element of this competition, rather than just the "debate" aspect. I also had a very enjoyable competition, being very engaged in the questioning and cross fire portion of the event, and I found that the nerves that used to plague me prior to this year are much less present.
Although public speaking is an art with infinite room for improvement, I was delighted to see that I had improved to the level I had originally hoped to reached. Meaning that I no longer fear or dislike public speaking like I did upon entering high school which originally prompted me to join a club that exclusively does public speaking. I have also vastly improved my researching and persuasive writing abilities, as well as the efficacy of both those processes.
Regardless of this meet's tangible success, I am pleased to see three years of work pay off, and look forward to applying the new things I've also learned to future meets as improving the larger weaknesses in my speaking will allow me to be more meticulous and refine slighter details.
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