Ranking Speech Categories According to Coolness- Ian Caffarel

(This guest post is from Ian Caffarel who's been competing in speech and debate for two years. He says it's very cool and is a huge part of his life, and he also enjoys classic rock. Enjoy! Want to write a guest post? Click here.)

So I’ve competed for two years in Speech (I started debate officially last year, before that, I did some Parli classes [knock knock]). I’ve done five of the 11-12 events Stoa has to offer (DI, Expos, Extemp, Impromptu, and OI), however, I didn’t really excel in them. Yet, I sort of felt that all 12 events being offered had some cool factor about them, and, after giving it some thought,  I now came up with this list, with each category getting it’s place for a reason or two explained, and see if you notice a trend.

So now, here we go:

12: Storytelling. Sort of cool, but it sort of bridges between limited prep and interp, so it is hard to decide which it fits into.

11: Persuasive. Due respect, it’s good in persuading. It’s in it’s place because there are some cool speakers, however, they are on the dark side in debate (LD, due respect to them.)

10: Original Oratory. For most of the reasons as Persuasive.

9: Dramatic. This is the first one listed that I did last year. It’s run by cool people, however, due to the difficulty of finding a piece (or coming up with one yourself) that will warrant the use of the tissues carried on the audience, it gets ranked relatively low.

8: Humorous. Cool? Maybe, as people usually gather by the crowds to watch them. However, it gets its ranking due to the difficulty finding a funny piece.

7: Mars Hill. It is cool reaching out to the nonbelievers around us, so it would deserve a higher place, but it won’t breach the top 6 due to the fact it is now being substituted for Impromptu D:

6: Duo. Great, as they are usually cool and people flock to watch them. Need I say more?

5: Open. Cooler, as they are usually great, a ton of my cool friends do them and, as if that didn’t already make it cool enough, you can write/adapt your own! Can that get better?

4: Expository. Smaller, but still run by awesome people, and I gave it runs last year and the year before that. I plan on doing better, and possibly anyone else great that will do one next year.

Now, here are the top 25%, and tell me if you notice a trend.

3: Apologetics. The defenders of the faith. These speakers have a very important job to do, so that drives the category to this high a spot in the rankings.

2: Impromptu. Cooler, as you don’t know what topics you’ll get until you set foot into the room and see them. And then you get to talk about anything you can think of that relates to the topic (for me, I usually have this rule of thumb: When in doubt, use the war, as in WWII.) Sure, the category is dead, but that won’t knock it out of it’s spot, just below the coolest speech category ever offered:

1: Extemp. Talks a lot about the news. Sure, it involves a ton of hard work, but who cares?  Because there is a HUGE cool factor that comes with it. And at the final prelim tournament last year, I used a song that I heard on YouTube as an intro. There is nothing like Extemp. Once an Extemper, always an Extemper.

So there you go, the different speech categories according to their coolness.

You’re homeschooled, and that’s cool.