Need to choose between this PS (B) or ....... Forum

[gregthomas77]

Twenty Chicken McNuggets, a supersized Coke, and a big silver bowl: that was the reward for what at the time was the biggest achievement of my life.

When I enrolled at Methodist College in 1997, I did so because I was looking for glory. I had debated for almost five years in junior high school and high school, and admittedly I was pretty good at it. However, there are tons of different types of debate and when I found out I would have to try a new one in order to debate at the collegiate level because colleges do not participate in what I was used to, I was not scared, I was excited. Add to that the fact that I discovered that college debate involves you debating with a partner and the fact that my best friend in the world, Daniel, was going to enroll at Methodist with me and be my partner, and I was genuinely stoked. In my mind, I owned debate, and it did not matter what form it came in. I expected to be successful, and to be so immediately and with great frequency.

In large part, I was right. My partner and I did not have a losing record (debate tournaments consist of several individual debates) at any tournament during my first year of college debate, and other than my first tournament (where we went 3-3) I never missed qualifying for the elimination rounds. However, despite all of my success, my partner and I also had another streak that we kept alive through almost that entire year: we never won a tournament. We advanced through break rounds over and over again, but we also seemed to come up just short. We had a display cabinet full of trophies, but none that really mattered.

When we arrived to the American Debate Association National Championship tournament that year, we were confident that we could pull it off. After all, if you were going to win just one tournament in a season, the national championship would be the one to win, right?

In order to be successful, we put in a lot of work preparing. In fact, this particular tournament was held on the weekend at the end of Spring Break that year, so Daniel and I camped out the entire week of Spring Break in our debate office so we could work on debate every waking moment. Was it worth it? We were about to find out.

Through the first six preliminary rounds, Daniel and I had four wins and two losses, and thus we qualified for the elimination rounds. Elimination rounds at a debate tournament are like the national college basketball tournament in that the highest teams face off against the lowest teams and if you lose once, you are done. With that in mind, we were seeded fairly low in the bracket and we had four debates to win in order to be national champions.

I do not remember what the seed of our first opponent was, but I do remember the next three, because they were all from the same school and they were seeded (in order that we hit them) third, second, first. Of course you already know from what I just told you that we made it to finals, but there is more to it than that. The semifinal round of the tournament, against the second seeded team, was particularly tough for us because it was against a team that we had faced six times during that year and never beaten. One of my favorite memories in life is the look of disbelief that spread across their faces when that decision was announced.

Heading into the final round, our opponents (the top seeded team), came up to us and one of them handed me a quarter and told me “this is so you can call someone to cry to when you lose”. I felt like I was in a bad 80’s movie. Without getting into too much detail about the ins and outs of the round, I thoroughly enjoyed handing the quarter back at the end of the round and telling my opponent that I thought he needed it more than I did.

On our way home from the tournament, with our trophy (a silver bowl) in hand, our debate coach asked Dan and I what we would like to eat for dinner. We each got a twenty pack of Chicken McNuggets and a supersized Coke. The rewards for hard work are great, especially with sweet and sour sauce.

[gregthomas77]

Please, I need to get this in soon, any advice?

[bdole2]

It is my personal opinion that you should at least mention law school, although be weary that plenty of people make the "good debater = good lawyer" argument when law schools know that that is not necessarily true. Still though, your essay definitely had that personal 'touch' and I felt like I learned more about you after reading it.

[mala2]

Like the other better, it's very good.

[gregthomas77]

Like the other better, it's very good.

I think the consensus is that the other one is better.