leaving the seven minute rush

I stopped debating for a number of reasons. Most of those reasons were petty and some of them were defeatist. My instinct when everything gets too difficult is not to stop and reevaluate what was wrong but stop completely.

And that's what went on with me and debate. I didn't want to keep loosing to people. I mean it's no great loss if I quit since, I've never won a competition. In fact, to be more specific, my wins have always been small wins, and because the opponents were waaay suckier than us.

So yeah, they're small wins in which have gone down in debate history as... who was that girl again?

I've not yet had time to fully regret my entire decision, especially since I'm still in a society which very much participates in debate. But I haven't **been** debating at all. I miss the empowerment that it can give to you, you know. Talking to a room where for at least seven minutes, you pretend to know everything in the world, even if you really don't. And then you go back down to your chair, and realize afterwards that no, you're still going to be in the bottom rounds.

So who's fault is that?

For someone who doesn't really actively matter load and someone who has a total of three competitions under her belt... I really shouldn't be complaining. I didn't go to the first Asians becuase I enrolled in Physics, a subject which I could have taken later. I could have taken two GE courses which allowed me a leave in the middle of the summer, but I had to take a course that needed me to be there 100% of the time. Espeically since our school sent ten teams and it was largely subsidized bcause Philippine Airlines gave us our tickets. Imagine that.

So now that I'm graduating, and leaving the entire course of debate to the younger generation, I realize that I terribly miss it, and that I will vastly regret not competing in any competition when I was in college.

When it had been my time, I wasn't good enough in the try outs. Now that there's a lack of interest wherin I can actually have a chance of getting in even in a non-competitive slot to compete, I'm too scared to jump back in. Because it's been years since I've had the entire rush of speaking to an entire audience, to an entire room.

There, that's the first time I've said it in a while. I really shouldn't have taken Kath's pen and debated on... piracy on the internet, of all things, that day. I shouldn't have coerced nmost of the people I know to train holy. I shouldn't have have adjed holy extensively to train them for etc. I shouldn't have tasted the drug that I've been abstaining at for so long.

Now I have withdrawal symptoms.

Sacrifices

I'm graduating this April.

An achievement certainly, even if I'm dropping biology tomorrow.

So I was thinking of working, of going on, of where to stay of what to do. There is one thing I've never thought of doing : leaving the country.

I would have written my piece on it, but there are people who are far better at writing than me that have expressed their feelings on these things.

So I'll just put the entire thing behind an LJ cut and be happy that there are Filipinos, in the Philippines who still love our country.

( Sacrifices )