peachy speechie

(former) speechie in Indiana 🌽 college student with questionable music taste

[peachy-speechie]

Sometimes I remember this blog exists, and I feel like I need to remind myself that the same angsty teen who wrote and performed her own poems and interp pieces for fun is now studying chemical and bioengineering and doesn't know what fun is

like damn. I really became an even bigger nerd.

[peachy-speechie]

i love royalty as an aesthetic, hate it as a political system

okay eat the rich

but allow me to explain my fascination with royalty,,,

it probably just has something to do with the fact that I watched princess movies when I was little, and I was also extremely poor (and homeless for a bit) as a child, so now I seek comfort in having all my needs fulfilled constantly

also pretty dresses :))

[peachy-speechie]

not me logging in 2 years later because im bored

speech was cancelled because of covid

im in college now

i still really wanna do speech

i cant find my college’s speech team, just debate so maybe idk

[peachy-speechie]

Me, doing an HI style OP:

Everyone else in my round, doing a DI style OP:

(For those who don't know, OP is Original Performance, and it's a cross between HI and DI but can be scripted and you write it yourself.)

[peachy-speechie]

Sectionals are tomorrow, and I'm so nervous. On one hand, I feel great about my OP. On the other hand, I feel not so great about my poetry.

[peachy-speechie]

I'm low-key pissed at one of my teammates right now. See, I regularly ask for contructive criticism and feedback at practices because I want to know what I can do better. This girl is always like "omg its so good". Okay, whatever. What pisses me off is that she was talking shit about my piece behind my back. Like wtf. I wouldn't be mad about it if it weren't for the fact she refused to say it to my face when I asked for feedback instead of talking shit to my friends about it.

[peachy-speechie]

Me, realizing my speech sucks and sectionals are in 2 weeks

[peachy-speechie]

Okay, so my school's speech team is pretty new. We used to have a really good program, didn't have a team for three years, and just restarted last year. Even though our coach wasn't the best, she genuinely tried and would schedule plenty of practices and meets. But she left, and now we have a new coach. We've only had three meets so far this year, and our most recent one was December 1. We're not going to have any more meets until mid-February, two weeks before sectionals. I really want to try a new poetry program, but I don't want to go to sectionals with only two weeks of actual practice and critique with the piece. Also, we only get group practice on Mondays from 3:30-4:00. Even though we have a small team (6 people) and I'm the only one doing more than one event, that's not nearly enough time to actually run through everyone's pieces and exchange good critiques. Most of the team has only gone to 1 or 2 meets. The other captain and I are the only ones who have gone to all three. Everyone is woefully unprepared. Our coach can't give good critique to save her life, and we're dying.

Like sure, I can practice after track and homework and all that, but I need fresh critiques so I can keep fine-tuning. How do I go from almost picket-fencing early in the season to barely staying in the top ten? Because I never get practice and critiques. By sectionals, we'll have gone over two and a half months of no meets. I have the most experience and am the most prepared on the team. If I'm dying right now, how will the mostly novice team fare? Not well.

I don't know what to do. The coach seems more focused on getting us beanies and pizza than practice and meets, and she won't let other people take us to meets. It's getting so frustrating, and I don't know what to do.

[interp-memes]

When I eat sugary food/drinks on a tournament day

[triskele-y]

Tbh my meds made Christmas particularly fun and laid back this year & for once I was present in the moment which I greatly appreciate

Thanks Prozac

[speech-and-damemes]

Friday nights before tournaments:

[speech-and-damemes]

Humorous interp:

[speech-and-damemes]

When you’re double entered

[peachy-speechie]

When a big school floods a traditionally small meet

[peachy-speechie]

When its the night before a tournament and all the novices are texting you and asking you how to write an intro

[peachy-speechie]

The worst thing to ever happen at a speech meet

Anyway, I was really feeling it at this meet and crushing all my rounds in all my events. I was so looking forward to this meet because it was the first meet of the season, my OP was hilarious, and my poetry program was personal and tugged at the judges' heartstrings in a new way.

Either way, the meet was going amazingly until the fourth round. I decided to go to my OP round first because I really enjoyed performing the piece, and I was the third speaker, as opposed to the fifth speaker in my poetry round. So I go up to my round early and decide to sit in the hallway and enjoy the quiet for a bit. The rounds are about to start soon, and the other people in my round start coming over. We all talk and chill, but then we realize that the round started five minutes ago, and no judge has shown up. One of us eventually goes to the tabroom to tell them that it's been 10 minutes and there's no judge. Our judge shows up 15 minutes late and takes another five just to set up all his papers. While we all hand in our critique sheets, I tell him that I'm double entered. I'm the only double entered person in the round, and it's marked on his sheet too, so I'll go first, right? Wrong.

He has someone go before me, and I'm confused. But I let it slide. He calls out the second number, and it's not mine. I politely ask if I can be excused to my other event and come back later to do my piece. He seems confused, and after a few minutes, he lets me just do my piece right then and there.

I'm going up, and he just starts the timer before I even do the little nod thing. I perform, and I honestly felt it was my best round. Everyone was laughing at the funny parts and seemed to be enjoying the blocking and pops. Well, except for this guy. My OP is HI-style, so a big part of it is the tranitioning between characters, blocking, and whatnot. He doesn't even look up once while I'm performing. Anyway, I finish and ask to be excused. He ignores me and keeps writing. In fact, he was almost always writing during my speech. Eventually, he looks up, so I ask again. He's just like, "yeah, you can go."

I go perform my poetry round, wait for awards, blah blah blah. At awards, I got 4th in varsity division, but I was upset because the people who placed above me weren't very good at their OP, so it made me feel like wow I thought I did so well but I kind of sucked. I hold it together, and while travelling back to the school, I look at my critique sheets, wanting to know what I did wrong. I look at my first round. 1. Second round: 1. Third round: 1. Fourth round: 5. There were only five people in my last round, and I had beat all of them in previous rounds, so I'm just flabbergasted. My critique sheet from that round isn't any use either. I had three sloppily scrawled bullet points.

Good writing + good performance

Work on stance and expression

Duration: 7:42

This makes absolutely no sense to me.

He wrote the entire time. Why do I have barely anything on here?

All other rounds, the judges loved my stances and expressions.

I know for a fact that mine was the best in that round. It's not being cocky. I was the only one who had their intro memorized and followed the event's criteria.

I end up texting a friend who was in that round to ask what he got ranked. He got a 1, which completely boggles my mind because he wasn't THAT good. It turned out that the judge thought 5 was the highest and 1 was the lowest.

If that judge had just read his paper, I would have picket-fenced, AND won the tournament. It makes me so mad everytime I think about it.

[extempinators-deactivated202407]

Speech and debate is truly an event that worships success, to the point where our community often dismiss anyone who isn’t a “big name” as irrelevant. Think about it: how many times have you checked postings and skimmed over teams/competitors who haven’t made it big? Haven’t you been angry when a “nobody” wins or breaks and a well-known competitor doesn’t? Just look towards Extemp MBA, TOC, etc. These are simply representative of our culture of elitism.

Of course, this applies to any competitive activity and speech and debate is at its very core a competitive event. Sure, it’s not all about winning, but let’s be honest–winning is a very important part of it. If we wanted to do it for fun and absolutely nothing else, we would be motivational speakers, not competitors.

But nonetheless, there is definitely a toxic aspect to this glorification of success.