Another great Pro-am Team, Miri Muntean and Marina Kojic, helped to kick off DKWiens Debating season 2018/19 with an incredible success at the Sofia Open. They did however not only do an amazing job as a team, as a quick look at the tab – or better – Marinas memories below reveal.
Participating in a tournament for the first time made me realize a few things:
1. Being part of a Pro-Am team is a bless and a curse.
While I learned a lot from my very experienced and successful team partner Miri, I was afraid of letting her down or knifing our case. Miri did a great job mentoring me and after being first in round 1, I realized that after all it maybe wouldn’t go as bad, and focused on the good sides of having a Pro beside me.
2. Training is good, tournaments are better.
The feedback in Sofia helped me improve my speeches a lot, so after returning home I saw how much better I did in training sessions and also that I felt more comfortable speaking.
3. Tournaments are great to socialize.
In the end we made it to the final, with Miri being 3rd and I being 10th best speaker of the tournament. We celebrated by enjoying great Bulgarian food with our (new) friends and spending the time before our flight back walking around the beautiful city of Sofia.
Motions
R1. THW allow people to sue partners who cheated on them.
R2. THBT Putin is good for Russian power on the international stage.
R3. THBT the Bulgarian government should pay reparations to all those who were subjected to the Revival process.
R4. THBT the western companies and investors should pull out of the Saudi Arabia’s Neom project.
R5. THR the increasing presence of nihilism in popular culture (eg. BoJack Horseman, Rick and Morty etc.)
Semi: TH prefers to be an averagely intelligent person to a genius.Final: THBT it is NOT legitimate to shame public figures for beliefs and non-criminal actions from their youth (e.g. partying, alcohol consumption, soft drug use, political views etc.)
