Assignment 21- Caili Harris

At the beginning of this year, I began speech and debate with a single poem known as “The Blue Rose” by Gerda Klein. During speech competitions, I read and act out the story I tell along the way. In the beginning, I found myself to have great success, moving on to the final rounds in competitions I had never finaled before in. I anticipated the same level of success entering a competition in Danville, Kentucky. My performances went very well overall- no stumbles or pauses- and I hoped for the same success. However, I didn’t final in that tournament. Each judge writes their notes for our performances on ballots, and so I went to study them the following Monday. A judge wrote the word “fake” as one of my critiques. Another wrote, “Looks plastic-like.” Never before had I received such harsh criticism regarding one of my performances. On the one hand I felt discouraged, but on the other hand a part of me never wanted to receive a comment such as that again. Henceforth, I worked even harder on my piece and looked to my peers for feedback. But I still felt hurt in a way, like this was some sort of attack on me personally. That’s when my coach asked me the following questions: “Have you ever received this feedback before? And was this feedback useful to you at all?” To both I answered no. He urged me to continue my work, but also to shrug of those comments- seeing as they weren’t consistent with what he and my teammates have seen of my piece and that they didn’t have any real use moving onward. This moment taught me that you shouldn’t let harsh judgment discourage, but rather encourage you to work harder.