Wednesday, April 25, 2007

3 days of little sleep

These past three days I had only 3-4 hours of sleep each night. It all started when Puan Koh approached 3 Batai's debate team few weeks ago and she wanted us to represent DJ in KDU English debate. The reason why she picked a junior team for this championship it was because she wanted us to get the early exposure to debating for a better preparation for next year.

On Monday we went against Methodist Boys School with the motion "THB that boarding school is beneficial to children" as the opposition. We lost. Our very first time representing school in debate and we started out with losing. Not a good start, eh?

KDU debate went by wins. Meaning, in order to proceed to the semifinals you go by how many wins your team has. There were 3 rounds and the 2nd round was against SMK Tsun Jit with the motion "THB that young people should be subjected to night time curfew as a way to reduce crime" and we were the government. This time we nailed it and won. I also won 'Best Speaker' :) But our first victory was a bit smeared with the fact that the opposing team was questioning our win. The teacher, in particular said that we were referring to text and we shouldn't have won. Oh, for god's sake. Debate is not solely 'bout your style. It's also bout the solidness of your caseline and your matter and I think we went for the meat this time instead of the bones. Oh, well. It's a free world. They can say whatever they want.

And today, we went against Garden International School with the motion "THB that human cloning should be banned" and we were for the motion. After the two debates, I think Daryl, Keefe and I gained the momentum and we did our best today. But it wasn't good enough to seal us the victory. The adjudicator said our matters were sufficient but our styles brought us down. Daryl won 'Best Speaker'. He deserved it. Keefe and Daryl did their very best today and you could really see the syncronization and the unity of the team though we lost.

The 3 of us put in a lot of passion, commitment and hardwork into this debate competition. Someone was asking me how come I don't look sad that we actually lost. Well, crying and feeling sad for what had happened would only make me a sore loser. I'm glad I went through this competition because it really opened up my world to a new environment of debating. FYI, DJ's team is the ONLY team in the whole KDU debate championship that was purely form 3 speakers making us the most junior team in the competition. But I have to tell you this, we put up or at least we tried to put up a good fight to the opposing teams regardless of age and I think we succeeded in doing so.

To me, this whole debating experience is like baking a cake. We have gotten the basic ingredients of the cake (the basic debating skills) and we already mix the ingredients in the cake mixer. Now that are left to do is to perfect the mixture so it'll be all fluffy and nice after baking it meaning we need to perfect our basic skills of debating for the better and hopefully soon we will get to put the icing on the cake which will of course be the ultimate victory for us.

Now I can get back to my normal life and start concentrating for my mid-term exams. Oh, crap! As I'm writing this post, now I remember that I have a science quiz to prepare in a week time. Crap, crap, crap!!!!!

BTW...thanks to Pn Koh who had been very dedicated and helped us with our debates, Michelle, Adeline, John and Pn Farahnaz.

5 comments:

Andrew Loh said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Andrew Loh said...

its much easier to cultivate style - you guys are on the right track. good job and good luck for future debates!

:)

but what happened to the great manner i saw back in dj debate finals?

Nik Nor Zafirah said...

hi,andrew!i guess what happened at the 3rd round of the debate was that we were too dependent on our texts...

wat we need to do now is to brush up on our skills so we wont hav to refer too much on cards in the future ;)

well....this is just the beginning of our journeys as young debaters so i for sure won't stop here

Faridah said...

hello! make sure you have enough sleep-lah. This is one way to win also.Your mind has enough rest so it can think better (and you will remember better too)

Nik Nor Zafirah said...

haha...i think you're rite mum cause the night before i only had 3 and a half hours of sleep trying to write my speecheS....
n the next day i wasnt as effective as the day b4...sadly.... :(