so where should i start??
i’ll go with what happened at the intermahallah debate. I kind of had a culture shock for awhile there. Saturday morning, i had to stand in for Aisha, my Kenyan friend who’s in the ream but she had a mid term exam that morning. I really did debate, with another friend Nun. I can’t believe I actually did it. I was able to forget reality and just blurted out what I have to rebut and said. Of course there are so many other debaters, who ARE DEBATERS and they were freaking good. I realised that debating is just not having a say in a motion and standing up for what the side you are representing, there are the presenting techniques, how to give a speech CLEARLY and make the audience understand what you’re trying to say and be convinced by you. the judges were cool, they gave constructive comments and advices and how we can improve. But since I was just standing in for someone else, I only debated twice, and the rest were up to Aisha and Nun. They were good as well. Another Mahallah Halimah’s team was Manezha and Tuba, they were our only hope and they did it. Both of them got the best speakers award! The championship was exhaustive! We had to debate rounds one after another and you’re given only 30 minutes to prepare after the draw and the motion announced, before the debate. It’s a brain drain.
I learnt a great deal in the intermahallah debate and am considering whether I should join the club. I made new friends there and kind of alright with them, most of them are international students. I think that the club may help to improve skills like in the way we express our ideas and such. I may not be representing IIU teams or whatever, but I think the skills acquired would be good. Though there are some stuck ups but who cares. It’s a learning process. Another thing was most of the debaters were from non-irk kulliyahs, i only know jeton from bosnia who is a course-mate of mine, he’s still stuck up though, who’s in the debate club, but that’s it. Where are the future leaders and imams?? Why are they not expressing themselves?? There are students in the debate club who can’t speak a word of English, but they tried! Why can’t the irk students??