Despite the fact that I kept my pseudo-Tourette's under control, the competition tonight was embarrassingly bad. It is made worse by the fact that everyone on the judge's panel was undyingly cool...you know, popular, well-spoken, good hair...those people. I did pretty good through the part where I introduce myself...say, the first 10-15 words or so. Then it went downhill.
Judge: "So, why does the court think blah blah blah"
Me: "Uh....um....uh...." (face turns bright red...thank god for Irish grandparents)
Judge: ...staring me down...
Me: ...stutter...sweat...turn redder...stare at notes...stare at floor...think about vomiting...think about running out and never coming back to school ever again...try to decide if there is any graceful way for me to recover...nope, no way....
This goes on for at least a full minute before I make up some kind of bullshit answer and the judge mercifully lets me move on to my next point. I HAVE A PLAN HERE PEOPLE...DO NOT SCREW WITH THE PLAN! Don't they know I have a "roadmap" for god's sake? It's not like I started out my argument with "May it please the court, I have come here to be publicly humiliated because I am too stupid to remember the answer to a question upon which my entire case hinges."
So, afterwards they asked me some questions and I told them that I hadn't participated in Moot Court and they were like "Oh my god, we asked you such hard questions...we thought you had done Moot Court." NOPE!!!! I am pretty sure I screwed myself out of this by not being prepared enough, or not practicing enough...and I would really LOVE to do it, the topic for their competition next year is something I am so interested in and the people on it seem really cool and nice, which are qualities I have yet to find in many of my fellow students. Oh well, guess next time I will know what it means to be prepared...I just didn't understand how hard it would be to keep myself together with people throwing out a lot of questions I couldn't answer (or could only answer poorly given my clear inability to complete a sentence without showing the world what a dumbass I am).
Moral of this story: Ime not sew smartt.
