It felt like the room was closing in around me. Every time I tripped up on a word, it seemed to be amplified inside my head. Still, I powered through reading my debate constructive speech. In a way, it was exhilarating to let the words flow out, to go from typed to spoken. So much hard work was now coming to fruition and for the first time. It was quite a first for me.

         Just a few moments ago, I saw a new gray box pop up on the meeting screen. That was the judge. We would be starting the round soon. With a few anxious clicks, I turned on my camera to face my opponents. I straightened my back and made sure my tabs were in order for the fiftieth time. After a few moments of introductions, it was time to start. I drew in a breath and tried to summon all the debate knowledge and expertise I had. I would need it.

         “My time starts now. Our first contention is debt…” I read out the case as I had done dozens of times before. I tried my best to sound like I knew what I was talking about. I tried my best to emphasize in the right places and make an impact. I tried my best not to look at the stopwatch and pay attention to what I was saying. I tried not to trip on my words, but to no avail. “And thus, we negate.” I tried to end strong.

         I exhaled as the opponent began. I furiously scribbled notes on the paper, trying my best to catch everything. I couldn’t afford to drop any cases or miss a piece of information that could be turned against them. I made bullet points of their main cases and put little sub-bullets for supporting evidence. No matter how hard I tried though, my fingers could never catch up to his words. They were playing a game they would never win. As I was in the middle of scribbling down a sentence, he was done, only pumping more anxiety through my veins. In retrospect, I should’ve felt more confident after the constructive speech. There were clear opportunities. Alas, I was more focused on how it was time for cross-fire. In other words, three minutes of trying to sound confident and not stutter too much.

         “Can I have the first question?” He said. Relief flooded over me.

         “Sure.” He questioned me about the debt argument, prodded on the link and probability of our impacts. Eyes flitting, I responded primarily by restating evidence and using logic to crawl myself out. I feigned confidence as I questioned him on the likelihood of his claims. Too soon though, I saw my timer run out in addition to the judge calling time. I muted myself and pursed my lips. The cross-fire had gone better than I expected. The opponent hadn’t found all of our case’s flaws, though he definitely found some. Despite all my efforts though, I know I must have missed some of theirs.

         It was too early for moping though. I still needed to get through the rest of the round before I yelled at my past self about what I could’ve done better. I prepared to listen to two rebuttals and another cross-fire, but before that, I heard my partner request preparation time. I turned on my microphone on our separate call. My partner seemed relatively relaxed about rebuttals, which somewhat helped me calm down. More importantly though, he gave me a few pointers for the summary speech, which I desperately needed.

         “You should probably try to collapse, like get rid of, their hegemony case. Try to extend our climate change one more I guess.” He said.

         “Um, okay.” I didn’t know much about how to do what he was asking, but I’d try.

         I probably didn’t take enough notes during the ensuing rebuttal speeches. I was too busy preparing a summary speech in the margins of the notes. My handwriting changed from harsh angles to loopy cursive to short characters all in the same line as my brain tried to write and think fast at once. However, I did catch enough for my hopes to lift a little. Our defenses sounded somewhat strong. If I ignored the fact that the other team hadn’t responded, my partner and I actually had a chance. When I stopped ignoring the other team though, it went downhill. The way they attacked our arguments, it felt like they already knew our case before the round started.

         When the second cross-fire came, I had already generally finished my summary, so I watched. Something I realized was that even if neither of us had answers for a question, my partner could feign much better than I could. My break was over soon though. Reading over my outline one more time, I sighed a little and thought well here we go, time for my first ever summary.

         “Judge, we urge you to vote a negative ballot. Our first contention still stands strong, and their second is completely improbable, and thus irrelevant…” Presenting the summary speech was so much more difficult than the constructive. With the constructive, I had all the words written out for me. Moreover, I had read those exact words multiple times before. With this summary, all I had was a loose skeleton that was yet to be filled with flesh. I stumbled through with many ums and uhs; my past public speech teachers would not have been proud. I soon found myself with no more words left in my mind to speak for the summary. Breaking the horrible silence, I ended with a “which is why judge, you should vote a con ballot” in an attempt to salvage my speech. Next time, I would know more about the summary, though, and would hopefully craft something more insightful.

         Next was the grand crossfire. It felt redundant at this point. A few of our pieces of evidence seemed like dead horses the opponent would never stop beating. On the other hand, there were arguments on their side that we could never seem to knock down despite our efforts. When my partner began his final focus speech, I would have liked to say that I paid full attention, but I didn’t. I was more proud to note that I found weaknesses in my case which the opposing team exploited. At least that was good.

         Four minutes later, it was done. The whole thing. Just like I already knew the results, the judge took little time in disclosing our loss. We were only able to win one of their three contentions. It made sense. It’s going to be pretty difficult to win if you only ever play defense. Even though the chances were unfavorable for most of the round, the final results still stung. Since it was my first round, I didn’t have very high hopes, though the option of doing better next round reassured me. Now that I had settled into my loss, it was time to repeat the whole process again.