Why you should never, never, never give up: The story behind my persuasive

Once upon a time, my sister Kylie joined speech and debate. I was 8 at the time. The first time I went to a tournament it was in Houston. This is back when NCFCA was the only homeschool league around. This was also 6 1/2 years ago. Now then, fast forward about a year. Since the year before, I have accumulated much more knowledge of this thing called 'forensics.' (Of course, I had no idea that forensics was a word then.) One of the bits of knowledge that both my mother and I learned that there was a magical thing called junior speech. Junior speech is where the younger siblings of competitors (i.e. me) do the various speech events. Not all of the speech events though. There was no extemp, for obvious reasons, also there was no debate. I hear that they had junior debate like in the 90's/early 2000's. And they debated the same resolutions not stuff about the existence of unicorns. Anyways, I did juniors. I did an interp to be exact. A Junie B. Jones interp to be even more exact. And guess what. I got first place! But all I got was a dumb bunny ribbon. Nowadays they have actual trophies. But I just got this floppy little blue ribbon. But that wasn't even the worst part! They didn't even say my name right! And it wasn't just a mispronunciation, nay nay. In fact, when they called my name I wasn't even sure if it was me they were awarding with that dumb blue ribbon. You know what they called me? Jonie Hadley. Apparently one of my judges couldn't wrap her mind around the fact that Hadley is a first name as well as a last. After a moment or two, my mother and/or good friend told me that they were, in fact, calling me up there. So I very nearly bounced up there, not at the time disappointed by the measly ribbon. Now, fast forward to the next tournament.

You know in T.V. shows when there's some award and there's this one person who's expects to get it and they think that there is no possible way they couldn't get it?  And then when someone else gets it, the person who was expecting it stands up and bows or whatever because they think that they got it? Well, that's what happened to me. Sort of. I don't think I actually stood up and did that, but I came very near to it. I didn't cry. Well, I didn't cry at the time. But then I got home and read my ballots. Soul = Crushed.

So then I cried. And cried. And cried some more. I didn’t compete for four more years. I wanted to, sort of, but deep down inside I never wanted to face that kind of rejection and failure again. I didn't even compete when I was old enough for normal competition. But I knew there was no escaping competing this 2012-2013 season. There was no way my mom was going to let me forgo another year. So while figuring out what to do my platform about, I remembered the quote from Thomas Edison: "I have not failed 1,000 times, I have successfully discovered 1,000 ways not to make a light bulb." So I wrote my speech about failure. I wasn't even sure if I it believed myself, but I wrote it. And gave it. And didn't break. I didn't break at the next tournament either. But then (bum bum bum), at the next tournament....

I broke! I broke I broke I broke I broke I broke I broke I broke I broke! And I cried! Only is was tears of joy! Joy! Joy! Joy! And then there was a debate round and I couldn't focus on said debate because I was so nervous! And then I gave my speech! And it was only 9:00 minutes long! But it should've been 10:00! But who cares? And I got another sparkly green glittery check mark! And I just about died! And I got a medal instead of a stupid ribbon! Moving on to the next tournament: I broke to semis! But not to finals but I didn't care because someone who is someone also didn't break and that secretly made me happy! The next two tournaments didn't go so well, but NITOC is in a week so we'll see what happens. I'll write more about how I felt during these times later.

So for the sake of not again crushing my soul, please vote affirmative. Also, I drew that amazing picture on paint for you. So vote affirmative. Now. And comment that you did. Pleasemyconfidencecouldreallreallyuseit,