Dear Caroline,
I just learned something that really makes me sad. In my last letter I explained how I met Thomas in debate. I LOVED debate in high school. It was seriously my favorite thing about high school. Not only did I meet my husband there, I met a future roommate, good friends, and I earned a scholarship.
I started out pretty rocky. I began doing policy debate, which is an organized “argument” about laws or policies, my freshman year. I only placed at one tournament and it wasn’t even first place. My partner had left the tournament early as we thought we had ZERO chance of placing and we got in sooo much trouble.
Seeing as policy was not my forte I switched to individual events. There are a lot of events including, original oratory, dramatic interpretation, humorous interpretation, duo interpretation, extemporaneous speaking, impromptu speaking, and prose poetry. My sophomore year I switched to doing extemp and student congress on occasion. That is how I met your dad.
My junior year I was still getting by in doing extemp. But my senior year my friend Katie and I teamed up to perform a duo from White Oleander and I also wrote an OO. This was our year. We earned first place in OO and Duo. Unfortunately our nationals trip was in Wichita, Kansas! We still had a pretty decent time.
This morning I was on the Georgia High School Association website and I found out that debate is no longer a sanctioned event! I knew that the economy was not so great and interest, at my high school at least, had started to dwindle. I also know of several that had closed due to lack of interest and money. Still, it is like finding out an old friend has some sort of illness.
Debate means so much to me and I feel sad that is might be coming to an end. It was such a huge part of my life and so many wonderful things came from that experience. It is a sad day for me, and I am ashamed that I am just now finding out about it. Here are some of my favorite pictures from our time together. I hope that it can recover eventually.
The Carrolton tournament in 2007. We went on to win first in duo.
Amy, Katie, Me, and Abigail. Amy and I would go on to be roommates in college.
On the way to qualifiers.
Debate seniors 2007.
When we found out we were going to Nationals.
Competing in Wichita
At the John Mayer Concert on the Nats trip.
Love him!
Not to mention the single best thing that came out of debate. I met the love of my life.
Wish #22: I hope for you to fall in love with a hobby.
Love always
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