Your Second Year

I've talked a lot about novices and the first year of speech and/or debate. If you don't believe me, search for it on that little bar on the right side of the page. Frankly, there's a lot of material in novice-ness. But there is something I have yet to adequately explore: the second year.

The thing about the novice year is that it's confusing. Maybe you've had a ton of siblings do speech and debate before you, so you kind of had a head start, but it's different to actually do it yourself. The novice year is a learning year. Yea, people win events at their first tournaments, it does happen. But not that often, and not to most of us. Most of us spend the first year learning the ropes so we can be fantastic in the second.

That's what's so great about your second year: You've got the hang of it. You know what you're doing. You got this. You learned stuff and now you can win stuff. Or at least do your best knowing that your best is better than it was prior to your second year. That was probably confusing... you can win stuff. Like, trophies. You can also pretend that your novice year was forever ago and now you're skilled in speech, an expert on extemp, a professional platform speaker, doubly-dextrous in debate, accomplished in apologetics, ingenious at interps, and good at other stuff too.

I know for me, my second year was great. If I got my feet wet my first year, I dove in head-first my second. And there was no going back, man. No going back. I'm not really sure of a water-related analogy for my third year, but I'm excited nonetheless.

Very excited.

You're homeschooled. That's exciting.