Archive for November, 2007
An intellectual evening
On Thursday evening the Sheffield round of the Institute of Ideas’ (formed from the remnants of the British Communist Party, wahey) Debating Matters competition was held at Silverdale. Despite not being part of the debating teams for Silverdale, I went and took part from the floor. The whole atmosphere of an evening of debating in that way means a lot to me: the challenging of assumptions, the examination of arguments. The cut and thrust of arguments and attacks and defences. There should be so much more of it in our society. Unfortunately the format of this particular debating competition doesn’t allow so much for the cut and thrust and in many ways was not as competitive as the sort of style we have been practising with. In terms of style, most of the other teams were a complete walk over for Silverdale’s teams – many were reading straight off a sheet and none of them stood up! In our debates people are shot down in flames if they remain seated and are shouted at until they stand. Silverdale did not however do well in all areas. There were times when arguments had holes in and speeches did not go entirely to plan. Some of the other teams were also skilled and managed to blow apart aspects of Silverdale’s arguments. But they did well overall. In the end Silverdale did win and we are through the next round in Birmingham (regional).
This particular format places great emphasis on questioning and speeches are relatively short and so the audience play a pivotal role – in some debates they really can dominate. So much is this considered vital that an award is given to the audience member who makes the best contributions from the floor – I received this in conjunction with another, which I was congratulated for. However, the issue with all this is that questions are ‘collected’ for the team to answer together. I really don’t like this because what ends up happening is that it breaks down and a two-way conversations at least partially ensues. I think the reasoning behind it is to give people a chance to think up a response but they are too busy scribbling down questions to be able to do this. In any case, the event was a success and I am pleased that I was there.
Debating, elections and birthday
It seems I have been reduced to one blog post a month, so I better make this one good. Today was my round in the internal debating competition for selecting a school team for national debating competitions that are for the sixth form only, as most of them are. We started off well with a strong opening from me but then I totally misjudged the timing and ran on for a seven minute speech when I was making one of three minutes and so this spoiled the end a little. Nevertheless we were still in with a chance. Katy made her speech, but I think she piled on the facts and figures a little too much and this meant that she seemed a little rushed. The opposition by this point had established a strong case, directly addressing us, and despite the fact that we got a lot more audience questions than them we were still pretty even as it went into closing speeches. But I messed that bit up in general by again thinking I had longer than I actually had. Apparently debating won and we were very close, but overall my team did lose which shocked some others when told about it. I am disappointed that I will not be able to take part in the competition, but really I think in this case the other team was better so it was fair enough that we lost.
I am currently deciding whether or not to join the race for the Arbitration Committee this year. I am told by wikifriends that I stand a fair chance of being voted in (one, a former arbitrator, said that the worst outcome of it all would be being elected…) so it is worth doing as there is nothing to lose if I don’t succeed in gathering enough support to be appointed. I would like to do the job because I think I would be pretty good at it, simply put, and thus it is worth running for the position. It is something I could get into and get good at by being efficient with my time. The sucking of time that the job involves is of course the main reason against running, but I think that I could squash it in by reducing other activities. I think an important factor here is that I need to manage my time better to ensure that I can do all these things as I am sure that I can – the decision on whether to run or not rests on how well I can manage my time, and if I do post my candidate statement I will have decided that I can do it.
It was my seventeenth birthday on Saturday, and it has hit me how close I am to being eighteen, which concerns me somewhat. It was a pretty good day once I got back from work at twelve noon; along with my grandparents we went out for lunch and then opened some presents. Key presents are an exciting flash drive watch and Wikimedia and Wikipedia T-shirts. I also got a rather special box of crackers and various other things to eat, and surprisingly some clothes too, which is not usual for my birthdays. I also got a great deal of money which I added to my savings for building a computer, something which I am now aiming to do either at Christmas or over the half-term after that. Hopefully I won’t have an unreasonable amount of revision for the January exams because they are subjects I am not having problems with. So things are going pretty well in general, even if I rushed this post.