Debating My Way to Certainty Hannah Peters

I have no idea why freshman me signed up for debate. However, I marked a check next to “DEBATE1” on my tentative schedule because it seemed like the thing nerdy kids do and I most definitely am a nerdy kid. My first time competing at a debate tournament was an absolute disaster. I decided to take the lesser known ‘interp’ route of high school speech and debate competitions. I prepared a monologue from one of my favorite novels, ‘Anne of Green Gables’, as my Dramatic Interpretation (or DI) piece. Little did I know how dramatic DI pieces really were. While I took “dramatic” in the context of being in a play or theatrical, “dramatic” in DI means more like crying your heart out in front of a room full of strangers. In fact, speech and debaters like to jokingly pronounce DI as “die” in reference to how prevalent the theme of death is. Not only did I feel embarrassed by the inappropriateness of my piece, I felt deathly anxious the whole time I was speaking. However, after striking out I expanded to other events and was amazed at how easily public speaking eventually came to me.

Even more amazingly, I actually enjoyed public speaking. Although I could sometimes feel my knees or hands shake I loved the adrenaline I felt in facing my...