Rude Awakening

This enlightening misadventure started with a simple text message from my friend that asked me to take part in an English debate competition held by my university today. That's really nice to be chosen, isn't it? Well, to tell you the truth, we had to be substitutes for the original team; we were informed -and informed is clearly an overstatement, it was more like a yes/no question without the question- yesterday afternoon. Setting bad thoughts aside, I innocently thought this would be, let's say, a way to relive my exhausting and stressful debating past and also to respark my curiosity on all things debatable. I wanted to pick up from where I left off in high school, which wasn't that far. No drum roll, please. So, I absentmindedly happily said "Yeah, let's go."

Everything went fine: we assembled a team of three, gained clues on the motion (Welcome back to THW and THBT! Such memorable abbreviations.), went to Depok, and got to the debating room. And that's precisely where fine flies away, replaced by miserable. The motion for my debate was "THBT poverty in Indonesia is caused by foreign countries" with my team being the government side. Basically, it means we had to blame any random country besides our own for all the hardships most Indonesians have to face. The opposition? Uber debaters from the uni's debating society. Sarcastically, woohoo! So much for resparking my curiosity.

From the very first moment, the motion had me terribly dumbstruck. It was utterly surprising, like finding a clean public restroom outside the malls in Jakarta. In a previous post, I've already told you that I don't do so well in economics, let alone debate about it. I can bitch about abortion rights, freedom of expression, free condoms, and almost anything else except economics. The last time I argued acceptably was on free trade because the sacred well of knowledge, popularly known as Wikipedia, had a long page containing comprehensive arguments for and against it. Unfortunately, my team mates were also in the dark, although they had a better idea on the issue. In the fifteen minutes for case building, we scrambled to make a case blaming the spectres of unfair trade, protectionist policies, and the hidden agendas of evil developed countries for total world domination. *insert sinister laugh here*. To frankly summarize, it was a spectacular babblefest with a dash of subsidy here, a pinch of economic dependency there, and a whole mix of wicked jargons sprinkled everywhere to give the debate an exotic clueless taste. (The cooking analogy ends there, thank you).

As the third speaker, I had to make a grand rebuttal, hacking off at the opponent's arguments. What I did instead was a shameful act of treason against the meaning of grand. I virtually had no rebuttal against their case and I made up things about the "power and influence of the developed countries we depend on to make us go into bad trade/aid agreements". It originally lasted about two-and-a-half minutes, and I couldn't think of any other way to refute their claims. To make sure I survive the day, I didn't allow any of their POIs out of fear of being even worse. At such time of crisis, a little advice from my senior in high school kicked in: "whenever you are at a loss of words and you're stuck, just repeat everything you've said until you can safely close the speech". Repeat everything I certainly did. Blurgh.

After the debate, the adjudicator's comments didn't even need to be translated as a win for the opponent. He blatantly praised them for bringing strong points into the debate and elaborating those points well. On the other hand, I couldn't bring myself to writing what he said about our case; I just can't humiliate myself that badly. I'll tell you what he said about my speech, though. He told me that it lacked substance and I tend to repeat everything again and again. You know, saying the same stuffs over and over, blurting out things I've already said. Basically, using the same stuff for so many times. Just like this. For your information, dear adjudicator, I know that: I'm clueless, not stupid.

In the end, I realize that this is some kind of a rude awakening, if not an outright slap in the face, that I still have tons to learn and many sides to discover. I'm trying to be creepily positive and see this as a reminder, and perhaps a boost, to my future in debating. A bad experience is an experience nonetheless, and people say that experience is the best teacher -apart from the teachers who always give easy tasks and extra recess time. One more thing, kudos to my teammates for being the best impromptu debate team ever.