I love my family.

It's strange how this happens, but sometimes you get involved in a club, or some activity, and the people you interact with, the people who are part of that activity with you- they become your family.  Today I'm going to talk about my debate family, and my weekend.

Before I begin, I warn you that the next 2 paragraphs are incredibly boring and debate-jargon-y.  If you really want to, feel free to skip to the last paragraph, which is really all I care about, and don't bother reading my blow-by-blow of my weekend.  Otherwise, you can try reading it, and hit me up if you were confused and want a thorough explanation of the specifics and theory behind debate.


Friday afternoon at 12:45 I got to ditch my last two periods of school, get on a school bus and drive to Carson Valleys Middle School for my very first speech and debate tournament.  I was... nervous, excited?  I don't even know.  I was so psyched to be going, and I was going to have fun.  Friday was a speech day, so that meant I was going to be performing my Dramatic Interp. script.  I wasn't worried.  I had it memorized, and if I didn't do well, oh well, what matters most is that I had a good time.  The bus ride  to Carson was a lot of fun, involving me learning how to say "the purple elephant ate my pants!" in Tagalog and singing Rape Me by Nirvana with my friend Emily*.  When we finally arrived, we got to go into the lunchroom and chill, waiting for rounds to start.  Three rounds later (each round being in the same class room), I finally finished for speech, and got to return to the lunchroom so I could wait and see if I broke.  "Breaking" means making it to finals/semi-finals by the way.  Results were posted and my friend Charlie* and I both got to go to the final round of speech!  Yaaaaay us.  Then we all piled back into the bus, trying to make it home in time to watch the final few minutes of our last home game.  We didn't make it in time, but we had tons of fun singing Beatles songs at the top of our lungs, off pitch and out of tune.  That's alright, Reed murdered us anyways.  

We got back at about 10:45 (keep in mind that I woke up at 5 Friday morning) and all went home.  Saturday morning my alarm went off at 4:50, I woke up at 5, and was out the door by 6:15, heading for school.  At 6:30 the bus left, and we were on our way to Carson Valley again.  Saturday was debate day, so I had my first official round of debate at about 8 o'clock.  I'm a novice debater for Lincoln Douglas (LD) I was pretty sure I was going to fail miserably.  My buddy Charlie, the other novice debater, is a beast at LD.  Luckily for me, my opponent for first round was unexperienced and I did pretty well.  Three rounds later, (my fourth round with my Sophia*, the most challenging opponent and one of the nicest girls ever), I was pretty sure I was finished for the day.  But I was wrong.  At about 4:30 they announced the places of the Speech event competitors (I placed fifth out of six finalists!) and announced who of the debaters would be moving to Semi-Finals.  Surprisingly, I broke.  And guess who I got to debate?  Sophia again!  So me and Charlie (he placed first in speech by the way, and he also broke for debate) went to the Semi-final room and waited for semi-finals to begin.  Charlie debated first, on the affirmative side, (the resolution being "a just society requires the recognition of animal rights") against this SUPER CRAZY girl who said that if animals were given rights, then someday on the television we would see a giraffe debating the president.  ..... I know.  Insane.  Then she moved on to saying Charlie was advocating for murder and the slaughter of babies, and accused animal rights activists of being terrorists.  It was really entertaining.  When their round was over and it was my turn to debate, it was almost exactly like my fourth round.  Same opponent, same level of difficulty, the only difference was I was debating the affirmative instead of the neg.  When Semi-Finals was over, I was so tired!  All I was thinking was "I hope either Charlie and I both win, or I lose, because I really don't want to debate another round."  You see, if me and Charlie both one, it would be a Reno close-out, and we would automatically both win, and there wouldn't be a Final Round.  The results were posted eventually, and you know what happened?  I broke.  I was going to Finals up against crazy girl.  I have no idea how she beat out Charlie, because his case was amazing, and she was friction mental.  But all I remember is me freaking out, Charlie and Sophia and a million of my debate friends hugging me, and then me going to Finals for debate.


For my final debate round, a bunch of my Reno friends came to watch, and I got to be the negative side against Charlie's* crazy opponent.  I was pretty chill about the whole thing, because my advanced kids told me to just keep doing what I'd been doing all day, because apparently it was working.  So, I did what I did all day, didn't take it super seriously, and had fun.  I was kinda relieved I got to be the neg. that round, because the neg. has fewer speeches, and at that point of the day I was so brain dead and mentally tired I didn't want to do a lot of work.  So after I delivered my final speech and it was my opponent's turn to basically tell the judges why she won, I was so happy.   I just hung out for three minutes, listening to my opponent ranting about my case, with a smile on my face.  (it rhymes!)  Then the round was over, I shook my opponent's hand and congratulated her, shook all of the judges' hand, and then the Reno posse was out.  I didn't think I did super well during that last round, but everyone kept hugging me and telling me how awesome they thought I was.  It was overwhelming.  Finally, finally, they began to announce the results.  Charlie took 3rd place for LD Novice debate, and I took-  First.  I still can hardly believe it.  All of my friends were high-fiving me and hugging me and it was wonderful.  Speech and Debate might be an intense hobby, but when you have so many wonderful, amazing people there to support you...  This is pretty lame and pathetic, but it was all I could do not to cry.  I love my debate family, so, SO much.  They are amazing, annoying, loving and frustrating, and dysfunctional but hilarious, just like a real family.  Sometimes you doubt them, but they come through when you need them to.  I love Speech and Debate.  I love my adopted family.  And I truly hope with all my heart that you have a special group of people you can call your "family", because it is one of the truly greatest things in life.

Love,
Sierra


*I changed all the names in my story for all you creepy stalkers out there