Speeeech

This happened a week ago. But whatever.

I had a speech tournament. My first.

It was a novice tournament, so everyone there was doing it for the first time, but it was still stressful. The night before I was utterly hyperventilating. But whatever.

I got up at 5:50 on last Saturday. (Yeah. Crazy, I know.) I put on my skirt suit and my makeup, packed a bag, ate a small breakfast, and drank some coffee. I got to school at seven and bundled into a car with three other sleep-deprived competitors. The driver (a parent) had gotten us munchkins, which was nice.

After an hour-long drive, we arrived at Most Catholicly Named School Ever, aka Sacred Heart. We put our bags down in the cafeteria/gym place (I really didn't get it either), then found an empty room in which we could do voice and body warm-ups. After that we returned to the cafeteria and checked the postings for where we would be competing. Then came the nerve-wracking first round.

For a first-ever round, I think it went pretty well. Nerdfighteria was included in the speech I presented, and one of the judges was a Nerdfighter  - I saw her smiling at me the whole time and, as I found out later, she wrote DFTBA on my ballot!

I was still nervous, though, and I was pretty much shaking when I came back to my seat. It turns out I got my lowest ranking in that round - third out of six places - but that's not bad either.

The second round was far easier, but my stomach kept growling at odd intervals. I was so tired that I hadn't noticed how hungry I was, and ended up having to surreptitiously stuff sunflower seeds in my mouth between speakers. That was awkward. But my speech went fine, and I got ranked second!

Then it was lunch/critically review your performance in the first two rounds with your friends/critically review other people's performances in the first two rounds with your friends/re-apply makeup/freak out all over again time. *cue elevator music*

Anyway, then there was the third round, in which I was also ranked second, and then we had time to sit around and do nothing/take photos with other team members. And then we went to the auditorium, where there were seniors who had competed in NFL (that's National Forensic League) finals, and they presented their pieces. There was a girl who did declamation just amazingly, a spectacular duo interp of Dr. Jekyll and Hyde, a phenomenal extemp person (where you're given like 30 minutes to prepare a speech and then you present it), and a hilarious humorous interp. It sort of made you think, "Why do I do this again?" but it was quite entertaining to watch.

Then there were awards for anyone who'd gotten first place, which I hadn't, and then we got our ballots, took a team picture, and went home. We were all simply exhausted, though I was vaguely hyper on the fact that two of the six people who had judged me were Nerdfighters.

People ask why I do speech, why I take the time to write and practice and wake up at 5:50 and give away my Saturdays. First, you get to talk all day, and people have to listen. Second, why does anyone do a sport or play music or make art? Because they like it, or because they want to get better at it. I love words. I love moving people with words. And that's what speech is all about.

Archaic Writings of Moi

I've been reading over my old poems. It's fun and it makes me feel like such a self-centered genius because I think, "oh hey, these are pretty decent!"

I also came across a story that I started in fourth or fifth grade. To be perfectly honest, erm...it's absolutely terrible. It is so very cliché and repetitive in the field of word choice. Not that I've made much improvement in that sense on first drafts, but when I go back and read it I think I might have spent more time choosing the font and formatting than actually writing. Whoops. 

But at the same time it's amazingly okay, because it's not much more than you'd expect from me back then. You kind of look at it and say, wow this is terrible. Makes you think of the fact that you're so much better at word choice, grammar, and just general story-making.

As for showing it to other people...I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. *reads it over again* Yeah, I don't think it will happen...EVER.

Wednesday

Normally I hate Wednesdays. They're the longest school days of the week - 8:45-2:45 - and it's annoying, even though in America I was at school for longer each day. The main reason of my dislike of Wednesdays is that I have three double classes - three classes of ninety minutes each, plus a forty-five minute class. It's tedious.

However, today seemed to be more okay than usual. I mean, obviously Grammar class was boring as ever, but we always have recess between the two classes and the teacher generally arrives at least ten minutes late for the second class. Israeli Heritage is an alright class anyway, and it was forty-five minutes. Besides which, it was quite an interesting conversation-class to listen to (sometimes I like listening to debates more than participating in them).

Then came English.

Now, obviously I'll be the first of my class to say that English is awesome, for obvious reasons. It's nice to have an opportunity to speak English to a teacher because you have to. Although I suppose the thing I like best is that I can make a total mess of the languages and every person in the room will understand. Unless I use really big words, like sesquipedalian. Which is an awesome word which means "a person fond of long words."

But today's first English class was one of the awesomest ones ever. Why? Because there was no class. Later (in the second class) we found out that our teacher had been with a student in the library and had forgotten entirely that she was supposed to teach our first class (a variation of this has happened before). I had hilarious conversations with my friends who are boys (NOT boyfriends, just to be clear, and I am not a polyandrist). Over the course of these conversations I realized that (1) I have had more ease in making friends with boys here than girls and (2) my friends who are boys have exceedingly perverted views of the world. I also swore a few times, at which they kind of stared at me for a few moments before going back to their own (and rather more heavily-loaded with profanity) points to make.

In the second class, the teacher came in, which was a sad end to our hilarity, because we had to complete a quiz. It was okay in the end, though.

After that we had math, which is usually the boringest of borings. (And yes, I know "boringest" is not a word!) But today another of my friends who are boys sat next to me. He's a math genius, so half of the lesson was us sniggering in the back of the class, laughing at the "leaning tower of Pisa"s we'd made by sticking our pens in holes in the desk (apparently, someone in a class before us was really, really bored and in possession of something sharp), and the other half was him answering questions intelligently and going through the class/homework faster than anyone else.

It was a good day. At least until I re-injured my back in ballet class (I injured it on Sunday and I thought it had healed). What will I tell the PE teacher tomorrow? I had to sit out last class too...sigh...