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.