My Forensics Lament

[The following, randomly placed photos are some of my favorites; click to enlarge each.]

This morning as I sat across from my boyfriend at IHOP, my shoulder shrugs went disbelieved as he continued to ask me what was wrong, why I wasn’t my “jovial” self. Finally I uttered, “I’m devastated that Forensics is over.” With those six little words tears flooded my eyes, right there among the pancakes.

It’s been a week now since I concluded competition at my last tournament; unlike PKD Nationals last year in St. Louis, this year I was not able to blog from the competition. Gatlinburg Tennessee, was full of many things… many tee shirt shops, religious shops, a frightening amount of confederate flags, but absolutely no internet access.










As you may have read in our coach’s press release below, we tied as National I.E. Champs. I’m humbled to have been the only graduating Varsity member of a team that won the State Championship for the first time in thirty-five years and two National Championships in a single year.


But it’s not just the accolades that leaves my mind adrift with sadness and disbelieve of its conclusion… it’s the combination of success and inclusion that I’ve never had before and fear I’ll never find again. In high school my cross country team became my closest friends for a few months every year, but I was never good… seriously, I strove to not finish last… I guess you can say I’m pretty good at pageants, as I’ve won the second local I’ve entered for the past four years, but as a result my friendships within that community are not as close as those I see among other girls who see each other in competition more often. In Forensics, however, we are a family all year long and as a result we’re good. Damn good.















It’s interesting because in Forensics we enter each competition not with the intent of winning, but rather inspiring… Our goal is to teach the audience something they didn’t already know, to make them laugh or cry in our interp. events, or cause them to say, “So that’s how it’s done!” It’s a result of that mentality that we come out victorious in the end. I’ve applied the same to my pageant participation. I don’t think anything but stress can come from pushing ones self to simple “win.” From the past five years of pageants and concurrent four years of Forensics I have developed poise, professionalism, endurance, spontaneity, flexibility and confidence that no other class, activity or organization could have offered me.


However, as both of these competitive activities draw to a close, I’ve began to question from what I will derive my value in life after competition? Again, I don’t compete in either one of these things solely for the awards… but it’s the process of attaining those trophies, plaque and crowns that have taught me so much and made me who I am. Some people derive their value from being a good parent, a successful student or an advancing employee… for the past five years I have obtained my worth by cultivating myself into the person I am and like through these competitive activities. Forensics is over, and soon pageants will be too… so what then?

The truth is clearly that my impending graduation has raised the usual anxious feelings that life transitions always cause. I think this has actually made me a better Springboard coach this semester, as I’m relating more to the difficult transitions the first year students are currently facing. I guess in respect to all this I should listen to the character I played in the DUO I performed with Sarah for PKD Nationals, she said, “You’ve got to keep changing… Become a person you like, a person you want to be… then move on.”

Change is not something I’ve ever been too good at though. No matter how much I’ve put into something, I have a tendency too look back with some level of regret as I am forced to move on from it. We tied for I.E. Champs of PKD Nationals, which caused us all to look back and say if only… If any one of us would have been one place higher in any given round we could have definitively won… If only we’d have practiced more, if only I wouldn’t have gone over time in that rounds, if only… But national tournaments, this one and CFA, are what we call “fluky” because the judges come from so many different areas and like different styles. Things like my poetry, or Kenny’s ADS, which placed everywhere else all year long were hated for no reasons by the judges at PKD; whereas the DUO Sarah and I barely threw together (since my usual DUO partner, Lew, accepted military duty instead of competing) was awarded.


It’s a lot like pageants, in that you never really know what the judges want. All you can do is your very best, and be able to walk away happy with yourself, despite the results. Like my Rhetorical Criticism, I walked into PKD the “returning champ,” so to speak. I’m disappointed with my Fifth Place finish this year, but I’m happy with myself. Funny story, last year there were no final rounds at PKD Nationals, rather there were “Showcases;” since they were unjudged my coach and teammates came to watch me and I totally flubbed up and froze. (Funny because I was Top Speaker in the event anyway, based on judged prelims.) In interp. events, I have no problem in final rounds, or performing in front of people I know because I’m playing a character; staying in control while under pressure in memorized public address events, however, has been an uphill battle for me. I was highly aware of this going into this year’s PKD Nationals, because this tournament did have official, definitive final rounds… So though I’m bitter and confused about being 5th and beaten by someone who fumbled their visual aids, someone with a two year-old a artifact in their speech and someone else who was about as exciting to watch as cardboard, I am still happy that I overcame MYSELF and was not affected by the pressure of a final round at a National Tournament; my Crit, the last speech I ever gave in my Forensics career was all I could hope it to be. Besides, my National Title went to my very deserving teammate, Michelle!

And team is really what it is all about. There was a moment early in the semester when it was all too much, and I didn’t think I could do the graduating thing, the pageant prep thing and Forensics… But I quickly realized I needed the team and they needed me. The world which we share is exclusive and no matter how much you try to explain it to others, all we really have is each other. After the PKD tournament, about a week ago to this moment, I sat on the balcony of one of the hotel rooms reviewing the judge’s ballots from my rounds. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I read vain comments like, “the next time you perform this piece…” Our alumni/volunteer coach joined me and said, “Don’t take offense to this, but I think you’re taking this so much harder than I did because you’re so much more socially involved with the team.” I smiled and thanked him for the compliment. We agreed that of the three “generations” or member composition of the team which we'd both known, this year was defiantly the tightest-knit with the most compatible personalities.



I don’t know which team members or coaches read this, but I thank you so much for… everything. I don’t know how much emotion my writing style reveals, but as I sit here in my living room, I’d rather be uncomfortably squished in the van half way across the state with all of you! I know that’s hard to believe as I whined about wanting to driving myself to half our tournaments… but the point is that I hope you all give it everything in your remaining time, because the moment it’s gone, you’ll want nothing more than another round to sign in to, another 4 a.m. departure, another ten minute speech to memorize, another DUO partner you can never get a hold of, another impromptu quotation you don’t understand, another heavy v.a. case to carry around, another foreign campus to get lost on in the snow, another round of seven boring infos to sit through, another year with the team... Thank you so much, you have been, without question, the best aspect of my college experience.