Ten-Minute Talk: Debate

It’s not much of a secret I did debate in high school. A lot of people who meet me immediately have a hunch, and too many of my friends have tolerated my esoteric storytelling.

But I’d be remiss to say that debate hasn’t had an even greater impact on me. I find myself talking about so many aspects of it that have stuck with me and made me a better person. This post is to put them in writing.

I’ll start with the easy one: speaking. I’d say public speaking, but I think it applies to a broader set of applications. We each have certain mannerisms that we just use too often. To us, those phrases or words blend into our everyday speech and fall into the background. But to the people we talk to, those can be distracting. Debate didn’t eliminate these from my daily speech, but learning how to pick my words as I speak them has helped me speak more clearly when I choose to focus on my words. It’s a skill that I can apply when I want to (though applying it all the time would be exhausting).

The next obvious choice is research. I struggled a lot with research in the first half of my debate career. Instead of letting my reading and research guide me, I looked for people who agreed with the argument’s I’d come up with myself. Of course, I was a high school freshman, so these arguments were rarely sound. Learning to read about a new topic and to start with the judgment and analysis of experts in the field has helped me pick up new skills and stay open minded on new topics.

Debate also forced me to think on both sides of a topic. There were certain topics where I felt more strongly toward one side. But even with those topics, I found arguments on the other side that were persuasive. Since debate, I’ve carried with me an appreciation for the complexities of modern issues, and that there are good arguments on both sides of any issue.

Beyond those surface level things, debate enhanced my thinking. At first, I just learned to break down classic kinds of arguments, understanding the logic chain to justify one side of a topic. But as I grew in experience and ability, I started developing and facing more nuanced and unique arguments. Each time I dove into a new kind of argument, I had to learn a new way of thinking. As I did so, I quickly saw a sort of general framework for argumentation.

This general framework is useful in and of itself. It’s helped me see how any decision is a function of a “framework” for the decision (establishing what is good or bad) and evaluation of that decision within that framework.

But it’s the process of learning to think in a new way that’s become my best intellectual skill. Since high school, picking up new ways of thinking has been second nature across all disciplines. Debate gave me a generic yet powerful toolset to apply to learning and analyzing any new system, whether it be a linguistic or rhetorical system, an interpersonal one, or a set of quantitative methods.

All of this is well and good, but I, as cliche demands, left the best for last. Debate taught me to self-motivate. In my personal statement (shameless plug, check it out here), I talk about how debate was a sort of addiction. Every win felt like a high, and after a good tournament I’d feel on top of the world for weeks. At the same time, every loss was crushing, often making me question if it was worth it.

As I continued through debate, choosing to stick with it through the losses, I developed a sort of manic energy. Debate taught unlocked this underlying motivation, a proverbial “fire in my belly” to succeed. Since then, I’ve seen it come up in my college life. Whether it’s abandoning plans to study for exams, abandoning my fee evening to finish a project in its final week, or learning to put aside my own anxiety and fatigue to lead an organization, I’ve been blessed to have that source of drive and energy to draw from. Debate was the first thing I truly sacrificed for, abandoning my weekends and my free time to go to tournaments and do research. It taught me to flip a switch at crunch time and enjoy the feeling of grinding to the end.

My experience wasn’t unique, and the proof is in the results. By the time I finished debate, I could name someone I’d competed against from every prestigious university. As I browse my LinkedIn connections, I see countless former debaters working in prestigious corporations, no doubt applying the skills we learned in high school. While debate certainly wasn’t (and still isn’t) a perfect activity, I can say with confidence that it greatly benefited my experience in high school and beyond.