As corona has drastically changed the way that our world works it has also made a lot of events move to an online format. For me that meant that the past week instead of traveling to New Mexico to compete in the national speech and debate tournament, I simply got out of bed and sat at my desk.

The tournament not only crashed the server to log onto zoom numerous times but it also caused a lot of debaters to get kicked our of rounds while they were giving a speech, asking other competitors questions, and listening to judge feedback. This aspect of the tournament was extraordinarily frustrating not only for myself but also for the coaches and judges who were working to make the event happen. However, the people in charge of the tournament made small adjustments throughout the week to help things run more smoothly.

Some of the positive impacts of the tournament being in an online format was that we were able to compete without having to pay large amounts of money for hotels and food. Furthermore, instead of prepping between rounds we got to take naps. All of these changes to the process of attending a debate tournament were things that I really appreciated and wish were things that we could have the ability to do at a normal tournament.

Overall I would say that the experience was not quite as good as the tournaments in the past that were in person but it was enjoyable and I was happy to walk away being ranked as one of the top 50 debaters in the nation.