school updates
Friday, January 16, 2009
So last year Econs pupils were invited to join an inter-school debate hosted by the MOF. I joined up, together with a few other applicants, and our trial date went as smooth as melted butter and an accompanying knife.
Trial runs went on sporadically throughout the holidays, in a less rigorous fashion that I had expected. Yesterday the last trial run mopped up everything that we had missed, and we had missed a lot.
I went down to MOF today after an early release, with Vijay, Amos, Lyn, Horm Earm and Andy for the debate, and I was pretty certain my hands would be shaking like they did during my National PowerPoint competition back in Sec 2. In air conditioned rooms I tend to have an increased propensity to grow nervous.
We came early, so we saw the group before doing some other motion. I saw them and was thinking, no way in hell am I going to be able to accept Points Of Information. Seriously, I couldn't absorb my script at all. If I hadn't written it in abridged prose, I probably would have been searching for the nouns and adjectives to fill in.
Our turn came, but the shakes didn't. Even on stage and speaking or rebutting, I was nervous deep down, but it was more malignant that evident. I think I rebutted one POI fairly well, and I gave my fair share of unaccepted POIs. I wasn't devastated at all when I heard HCI won. In my opinion though, there was a fantastic speaker from NUS high school who spoke very eloquently and held herself like a true debates veteran.
Overall, I knew from the start that this would be mighty cliche, but it was seriously the journey that made it all worthwhile. Oh, that and the fact that I was told I did well by everyone there... including Vijay! And that's something since he's the MJC debates Chairman! I don't usually do this (no seriously) but he said at one point, jokingly, that maybe I should replace him. It was a joke for sure, but that meant a lot to me and the effort I put in for this.
I'm glad I signed up.
You know what I'm not glad for? Foolishly missing the meeting for selected pupils to attend the Simulated Model United Nations seminar this year.
Oh and what i'm looking forward to is the meeting on the upcoming Vietnam trip this coming monday.
posted by joseph at 10:23 PM