Stop Letting the Opinions of Others Define You

I had an extremely interesting experience today, and it was extremely eye-opening. One of my best friends is a high school English teacher, but she also coaches speech and debate. They’re always in need of volunteers to be judges for the tournaments, and I was finally able to go. As I sat there judging these kids, my over-analytical self was thinking way too far into this thing, but it really helped me realize why it’s so important that we don’t let the opinions of others define us.

When I got to the tournament, I was a bit nervous because it was my first time judging one of these tournaments (or anything really for that matter). The teachers were awesome though, and my friend explained the scoring system. Something I wasn’t prepared for was the fact that today was all of the speech kids, so I wasn’t actually judging debates.

I really wanted to see how these young people debated topics because I feel we live in a time where debate is something that nobody does anymore. Online, people just judge everyone else and refuse to see the view of the opposing side. It blows my mind how it’s rare that people can have a civil conversation about serious topics without becoming outraged, so I was hoping seeing these young people debate would restore a little bit of my faith in the future of people being able to have conversations.