Debate was an activity I had been considering doing for a couple years, so I decided that seventh grade was a perfect year to start, as it was also my first year of middle school. I had been doing public forum debate for a couple, and I felt like I was only doing worse and worse at each tournament. I had my first tournament launched on me by surprise, but I still won two of my preliminary rounds out of four, I may not have moved on, but for as inexperienced as I was that was amazing. 

     After that I didn’t work as hard as I could, so I wasn’t seeing any improvement in my tournaments. In fact I seemed to be getting worse, so I resolved to working harder and getting better. I worked in a lot of my free time and even wrote my first very own speech, but none of this was helping. Simultaneously, I had also realized I wasn’t paying enough attention to my school work, and my grades were dropping, so I had to figure how to balance school work, extracurriculars, and improving in debate. It took a couple of weeks, but eventually I was balancing everything fairly well. At that point I was getting frustrated with debate as I didn’t understand what I could better to help me. 

     I thought my problem wasn’t my work ethic but the person who I was working with as partners. I decided to switch my partners; this happened three or four times over the next couple of months. All the while I saw my friends getting awards, placing in the top three in tournaments, and just generally achieving more and doing better than me. At this point I had become discouraged and thought that PF(public forum) wasn't for me, and that I would try one more tournament with one last partner switch and see if that works, but if it doesn’t I was going to quit. I spent all my free time working on doing well in this tournament, because I thought I might as well go all out for my last tournament. I had more extra information, rebuttal arguments, practice speeches, different ways to take down arguments, and actual speeches to use in a round than I ever had. I hadn’t thought it would help in many ways, but I figured doing the most might help me. I also had a partner who just started, so while compiling information and arguments, I was teaching them. You wouldn’t believe how sleep deprived I was those three weeks. On the day of the tournament I was more nervous than my first ever tournament, but ventured onward. As I went through the first preliminary round, I found my speaking was clearer and faster than ever, and I was able to give better responses and rebuttals. I had felt better about that round than I ever had before, and my partner had performed extremely well. I swiftly went through the next three rounds, I had won all four rounds. We moved on to quarter finals, and I felt amazing, because I had finally gotten past the preliminary rounds. I had moved on from quarter finals to semi finals, and after that I had moved on to finals, I was amazed that my hard work had gotten us that far. We had lost the finals round because the judges weren't properly understanding mine and my opponents arguments, but it was okay because I had gotten second place. That was the best day I had ever had, because in the first tournament that I had gotten past prelims I also placed second. The judges also believed that I had spoken extremely well, so I was awarded second place speaker in public forum debate. I was extremely proud of myself, and I went home feeling the best I had in awhile. 

     After that, my coach believed that I had potential to be even better, so he told me that the next year I would be varsity. After that tournament, I started preparing like that tournament for every other one I attended, but a little less extreme, because I still needed sleep. I saw myself moving past prelims in most tournaments, and I realized that I just needed a push to realize how I needed to to see improvements. I decided to stay with the partner I had at my big break. I understood that I was good enough. I just need to work a little harder, and from then on I became one of the top debaters.