Speech Tournament Number Two

The last speech tournament of the year.
And my second one.
It's also the first one for a bunch of kids in my class...including two friends of mine who are doing a duet together.
The bus is going to be so crowded tomorrow. I would guess that between thirty and forty people from my school are going.

I already know that my first round is at ten o'clock, so I might go watch an eight o'clock round...except that it's a bit weird to watch a preliminary round, just in general. And the suggestion is that one practice and not go watch...but one also doesn't practice for an hour and a half or two hours solid.
However, perhaps one practices for forty-five minutes and does homework/socializes for forty-five minutes? It's possible.
Or I could always watch my friends practice their duet, because I think their first round is at ten o'clock, also...

Today after school I was talking to a friend of mine that was on Academic Team and is also in Advanced Speech, and he said that the senior who is Debate president at my school and has qualified for regionals in Domestic Extemp (DEX) and Poetry (PO) (with first places in both, and then with first places in Champs division in both) is glad that I'm coming. So I asked why, and my friend's response was, "He knows you're smart."
First of all, what does that have to do with anything? And second, how on earth did he find that out?
Of course, here I am talking to my friend, who probably told this other student. So...*shrugs*

I cannot believe it has been three weeks since the last tournament...can I have been this excited for the past three weeks? But it also seems like it was so long ago, because I've worked so much on the piece...
I hope I break to semis...I hope I break to finals...

Foreign Language

On Monday at school, all foreign language classes met in the Lecture Center and the teachers talked about continuing foreign language through high school and college, among other things.

That got me curious, so I checked out the foreign language programs of the 26 colleges in which I am interested.
Those that I judged to have the best options for French and Spanish with enough other variety:
Cal Berkeley, Harvey Mudd*, University of Washington, Wisconsin-Madison, Carnegie Mellon, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, and Purdue.
* Harvey Mudd doesn't actually have its own language program, but it's part of a group of five colleges in the same town. Everyone takes classes at the other colleges, and Pomona has an awesome looking language program.

Those that I judged to have the worst options for French and Spanish, even if they had variety, which some didn't:
Cal Tech, Michigan - Ann Arbor, MIT, Missouri-Rolla, Maryland.

The other 13 were somewhere in the middle.

Speech Competition Part 4

I promise, this is the last part. And yes, I know that the competition was six days ago.

Awards assembly. Hour long. Dragging on...so many trophies...some very strange ones...
The team did okay. The kids in the champs division -- people who had already qualified for regionals -- did better than the kids in the qualifying division.
And there was one duet who everyone (almost everyone at the whole competition who had seen their piece, not just people from my school) thought would get second. And then it didn't place in the top three. Those two were so disappointed.
Anyway, whenever someone from my school placed, we all stood up and clapped. When it was someone from a different school, we just clapped.
When someone from the fairly new school in our district won, we stood up and clapped, and they did the same for us.

And then we all got on the bus. And went back to the school.
Some people were going to Chili's and then the house of the president of the Speech and Debate club. I chose not to go.

And that was my first ever high school speech tournament.
I'm going to get to do it all again on February 28th...I hope it goes better. I mean, even if I don't do any better, I'll be less clueless. And I will know to plan ahead on what I'm going to watch, and to try to make it to places early...
I did learn some things. So the 28th will be my chance to apply them. But I must admit that there's a part of me that wants to qualify for regionals. But I won't be too disappointed if I don't, because it would be a bit unreasonable to be disappointed.

But wait! There's more. Post tournament stuff, stuff from Monday.
First of all, I got my ballots back. Ballots -- the sheets the judges have. There was one judge in the prelim room, and three in the semi final room.
So!

Ballot #1: Prelim ballot. He said he loved my selection, that folktales rocked. (Okay, okay, he didn't exactly say that. But he approved of my piece selection.) He liked how I waited for him before I began, and he liked my volume. He said that I could have emphasized the accents more, and that would have made it better. But he gave me first in the room!

Ballot #2: Semifinal ballot, the first one I read. Since I don't know if this judge was male or female, I will call this person a she. She liked my selection and my volume, but also said I could have done better on the accent. Also said the memorization was impressive but that made the script be distracting -- since I didn't look at it. She placed me 3rd in the room.

Ballot #3: Semifinal ballot. I have no idea on the gender of this judge, either. So I shall call said person a she, also. She gave me 5th place in the room, liked my selection, said I needed the accent (that has been added, just so you know), and probably said something else; I don't remember.

Ballot #4: Semifinal ballot. I'm calling this judge a he. Because there was one male judge in there. So I have to make someone a he. Anyone, he didn't like it. Period. Gave me sixth place in the room, didn't mention a single thing I did well. The ballot said that I looked stressed and my stance was tight, I needed an accent and more differentiation in the voices, I needed to slow down, and...
Well, was there anything else?
I don't remember. But none of it was good. Ballot #4 really annoyed me. I certainly believe that I did a lot of stuff that I could have done better. I don't mind the criticism. But it would be nice if this person who has so many suggestions for making the piece better could also tell me what doesn't need changing.

Second, the NFL points.
NFL = National Forensics League. By going to speech competitions, one gathers points.
I got 5 points for getting first place in my prelim room, and I got 2 points for how I did in semis, since 3+5+6 = 14. 14/3 = 4 plus some. But the plus some doesn't matter, just the 4, and like I said, I got 2 points for that.

Speech Competition Part 3

So, I made it to semifinals, which were at noon. It was 10:25 when I found out, so I had an hour and thirty five minutes to wait.
I'm going to backtrack a bit. Not only was I at the competition to perform, but I was there to watch other people perform. I wouldn't get to do that until two o'clock, and here is my lovely explanation as to why.
I had to perform at 8:00. I got out at 8:45, and I hadn't looked at the postings beforehand to see if there was something I wanted to watch at 9:00, so it was too late to find something by the time it occurred to me to do so.
I was going to go watch the duet of two boys on my team at 10:00, but I couldn't find them to ask if they would mind...and I had no idea if it would be rude to watch without asking. So I didn't. But I planned to go watch the duet of two girls on my team at 11:00.
Then I found out I was in semifinals at noon, and I knew the duets would end after I was supposed to have started. And walking out of the room in the middle would be rude, so I couldn't go.
I performed at noon...and I've forgotten why I didn't watch anything at one.

Back to making it to semis.
In that hour and a half, I talked to people, did homework, wrote in my notebook, ate a slice of pizza, drank the rest of my water...
...and at 11:45, I went to my semifinal room.

We started right on time, but the girl who was supposed to go first had a conflict with Standard Oratory. And I was second, which meant I had to go first.
I never ever ever want to go first again. Unfortunately, I probably will have to do so at some point. Going first just makes me nervous. I'm not used to anyone yet.

There were three judges this time, as opposed to just the one who had been in the prelim room.
It felt right as I started...and then I skipped a paragraph. A kind of important paragraph. But instead of freaking or backtracking -- I'd already gotten too far ahead to backtrack -- I went on. And tried to figure out a way in my head to fix the later part of the story that depended upon the paragraph I'd skipped. I pulled it off, but looking at the ballots -- those are the sheets the judges have -- later, I can see that it affected my placement by at least one of the judges.
Other than that, it went smoothly.

There were six people, including me, competing in the room, and the first three would go on. Coming out, I thought I had a chance, even though the others had been really good.
Oh, and all six of us were girls.

Sometime between one and two, I found out that I hadn't made it through. Which I was mostly okay with, even though I would have liked it (understatement) had I made it to finals.

So at two, I watched a girl from my school in the poetry finals. Prose is for freshmen and sophomores and poetry is for juniors and seniors, and they have essentially the same rules. The only difference is the type of piece you're working with. Lots of the poetry kids even choose one or two long poems -- 5 to 8 minutes total -- that are narratives, so it comes out sounding a bit like prose.

There were quite a few people in that room, though, so it finished after three. Therefore, I couldn't go watch something at three.
There wasn't anything I wanted to see at four, but I planned on going to the poetry finals for the people who have already qualified for regionals, which should have started at 4:30.
I got there at 4:20, and they had already started.

That girl I was watching in the poetry at two was performing in the monologue finals at five. I went to that with five other kids from my school. We all sat on the floor, except for one lucky person who sat in a chair.
The girl we were there to watch actually came in after all the chairs were gone, too, and so she sat on the floor with us.
The monologues were a lot of fun to see, because there's an intro, and then you have a comic monologue, and then a dramatic monologue. The max time is six minutes, so that's less than an average of three minutes per monologue. Unlike prose and poetry, you have no script, but the material can be similar to that of prose, just shorter and always in first person.
But it's fun to see people going from comic to dramatic. It's also cool to see how they use the one chair they are allowed to have. And what their blocking is. In prose and poetry, you have to stay in one place the whole time -- not so in monologue.

That finished at 5:40. 5:00 was the latest starting time, so there was nothing else to watch, even though HD -- humorous duet -- was still going. But it would be rude to just walk in in the middle, and besides, that room was stuffed to a brim. Everyone wants to watch the HDs.

So I sat and talked to people until the team went to the auditorium at about 7:00 for the awards ceremony.

Speech Competition Part Two

It was yesterday.

Guess what shy person broke to semifinals at her very first high school speech tournament?
*grins and nods enthusiastically* ME!
By the way -- to break is to make it to the next round.

Unfortunately, I did not break to finals. Bleh. I shall do better in three weeks at the next -- and last -- tournament.

Anyway, the whole story.
I got up at 5:56 am, because I had to be at the school at 7:00. And we had to be dressed up. *makes face* Red dress that I could survive the whole day in, black dress shoes, headband to match the dress, and a necklace my grandmother gave me for Christmas.
Add a blue drawstring bag with a yellow logo, and that was me on Saturday.

The contents of my bag:
My script. This was composed of three pieces of black construction paper with the words on white printer paper mounted on the construction paper, with the voices of the non-narrator characters highlighted in either blue or green. And the black sheets were in page protectors.
Two pencils.
A folded chemistry free response question, a folded blank sheet of notebook paper, a folded page with the first sentence of A Tale of Two Cities, and a folded page with the beginning of my version of that first sentence. In short, that was the homework I chose to take.
A notebook. I read through everything I've written in it at least three times on Saturday, and I added some stuff. In French, because part of it was about how amazingly nice the team was and how that freaked me out a little bit. And I didn't want anyone else understanding that, so I wrote it in French.
A red water bottle, partially full until 11:35, when I drank the rest.
A cell phone.
*tries to think if that was it* Oh! Money. For lunch.

So we got to the high school, and despite the fact that I was clueless, I did understand that I had to go to the wall with all the postings on it, find my event, and find what time I had to perform and in what room.
I had to perform at 8:00. It was 7:40. *groan* I put down my stuff and went off to find my hallway. I was nervous, and I was pretty sure that no one I was competing against was doing this for the first time.
I went into the room when the judge got there, and there were...5 others, I think. The first one who went did very well, I though, except that she started out way too loud. A lot of people do that, actually. They yell the beginning, and while you want to start off strong, maybe not that strong...
I went fourth. There was one girl who went before me who I knew hadn't done very well, even if they didn't factor in her piece selection, which wasn't that great. There was also another girl who I thought had a confusing piece...but I had no idea what was being judged, so I didn't know if that mattered.
After me, there was one really good person and one okay person. The really good person went on to semifinals later.
Anyway, me. I walked up there, and I waited for the judge to look up -- which he commented about on his sheet later, as a good thing! *happy* It went well; I didn't leave anything out, and my speed was right. But I was nervous, because I could hear that the voices weren't as distinct as I wanted them...
I came out saying it went okay. Which is what I always say. We finished at 8:45.

I talked with people out in the cafeteria (which was where everyone who wasn't competing was), and I watched the wall, waiting for the postings about semifinals.
At 10:25, I turned and saw a group pointing, huddled around the prose section, so I went to look.
I made it to semifinals.
Better than that, I got first in my prelim room.

(To be continued)

Speech Competition

I'm in a Speech class this semester, and I'm going to a competition this weekend.
I'm on the drama side of Speech, and I'm doing prose -- a story about Lapin. Lapin is essentially Brer Rabbit...but in the Louisiana Bayou, with the Cajuns and Creoles.

This is my first speech competition in three years, and back then it was mostly a joke. Everyone got either "Superior," "Excellent," or "Good." It was a feel-great-about-yourself tournament. This one definitely isn't.
So, I'm nervous. The coach wants to watch me practice beforehand, which is even scarier for me than the actual competition, since I prefer to think of my audience as faceless. (Except when I'm writing -- that's completely different).
I was asking the coach questions about the competition today, and one of the questions I asked seemed fairly normal to me, though I know it seemed odd to him. But anyone who has heard me talk about math or Academic team competitions would understand the question.
But he answered it, and the answer has made me even more nervous than I was.

I'm not allowed to take my jump rope.

My mother made me jump rope between rounds at Chapter Mathcounts last year. At State Mathcounts, she and a friend of ours made me jump rope between rounds. At National Mathcounts, the sponsor wouldn't let me go to lunch until I had jumped rope. This fall, at Academic Team competitions, I'm pretty sure one of the sponsors wouldn't have let me compete had I not jumped rope beforehand. She even asked me at the last tournament before our first game if I had.
It makes that much of a difference. I am calmer when I have jumped rope, I am less nervous -- sometimes even just having the weight of the rope in my hand helps, because I can find that beat without actually jumping.

But no.
*nervous*