Women Everywhere Scholarship Essay

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The 2017 theme for the Women Everywhere Scholarship is “A Confident You = Success”. It is very timely for my current situation. I am a permanent resident of the United States. I migrated to the US from the Philippines last April 2016. I am not used to speaking straight English when I first arrived here. My accent is very noticeable, and some of my pronunciation of words are not right. My classmates used to laugh at my pronunciation. They would apologize for laughing, and I would say it’s okay, but deep inside me, it breaks down my confidence little by little. Because of that, I told myself not to speak much. I went by the saying “Less talk, less mistake” until a sophomore classmate challenged me to join debate. He is so arrogant that sometimes, …show more content…

I have to go to practice twice a week, review many papers, do a weird speaking drill, and of course, practice debating with my co-debaters. Fortunately, all my hard work has paid off! At my first tournament, I won 4th place in the speaker awards and finalist team award. A huge achievement right off the bat! I was so scared that at the next tournament, I wouldn’t do so well and that is what happened. At my second tournament, I still got the 4th place speaker award, but my team placed quarter-finalist. At my third tournament, we were against a higher level conference, so I did not think I had a chance at winning. At my fourth tournament, it was against a conference below our rank. I have high hopes of winning because I know that I am better than them at debating. Unfortunately, all my rounds are against debaters of my level. I did not get the leverage of going against the lower conference. I only won 14th place team that time. I was feeling very down and disappointed that time. I am feeling like debate is not for me anymore; but I still went to the fifth tournament because it was the conference championships, and I had promised my coach that I will finish my first year in debate. I won the 11th place speaker award and semi-finalist team award. My team place rose, but my speaker place award went down. That is when I really knew debate was not for me. I am not feeling good about debating anymore. I feel like it is more

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