Debates

            I argued against gun control in the CAP Debates.  This was extremely challenging for me, mainly because I support additional gun regulations, background checks, and bans on assault weapons, all of which fall under my opponent’s stance.  However, this experience helped me to learn how to argue against your beliefs.  The main way that I did this was by passionately researching the stance that I was assigned to and attempting to convince myself that I actually believed what I was saying.  Interestingly, I now feel that I wasn’t very informed on the issue before I started my research.  After learning so much about both sides of gun control, I now feel a lot more moderately.  I used to favor all gun regulations, whereas now I favor more minimal regulations and channeling money into mental health treatment as a method of attacking the problem from the roots.  I think that debating the side I oppose improved my debating skills and my thinking skills immensely.  
           The debates also helped my to learn to work with a person that has a different work method than I do.  I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist, always trying to improve a project until it is the best that it can be, and it is very difficult for me to understand how people can just sit back when a project isn’t completely perfect.  My partner for this project was very much a person who does the minimum to get a grade rather than a person that is always striving to be better.  This match was extremely stressful for me.  However, my partner was a fantastic speaker, so although I did a lot of the research for our topic, it wasn’t a problem.  In the end, even though he didn’t know his stuff, he could just look at notes and speak as if he was knowledgeable.  I learned that people have different strengths than me and that I have to tolerate different levels of caring about a project.
             Another challenge that I faced when completing this assignment was the daunting fact that the majority of CAP opposed what I was saying.  I think that this pushed me to find stronger arguments and to prepare more than if I had had an easy win.  I’m also proud of this assignment because my partner and I actually won the debate, which I think is quite an accomplishment.  Although I would like to have prepared more for the cross exam and rebuttal, I think channeling my time into finding really strong arguments worked very effectively for me.  Another benefit of this project is that I became somewhat of an expert on an important topic.  This is good for dinner parties and such, or for being able to be a strong part of conversation on a topic that is complex and controversial is a useful skill.