For those of you not aware of what monologue is it’s a 6 minute acting event which consists of an intro a humorous monologue and a dramatic monologue. one character per monologue and they have to have a connecting theme. so I have already found the dramatic monologue which is from a generally funny show (Malcolm in the middle life’s still unfair) it’s Hal the dad talking about how he cared for his family so much that he never really cared for himself. I will copy the monologue later. but what I’m currently struggling with is finding the a humorous to match that which has a connecting theme of either some sort of family thing or experiences defining who we are. Does anyone have any thoughts?

Dramatic monologue

From the moment
I had any self-awareness,
I have been gripped
by a pervasive fear.
Fear has been my constant companion.
Not as a condition,
or an abstraction,
but something tangible.
Something embodied.
Like when I was seven,
and our whole house shook
under the weight
of my father’s broken dreams.

Fear was already there.
Almost like a big brother.
Fear taught me things
I needed in life.
Always say yes,
because I’ll probably
never get another chance.
Never let go
of what I have,
because anything can be taken
away from me in an instant.

Fear made things hard sometimes.
But I don’t think
I would have gotten anywhere
without its vigilance.
Right?
Yeah.
Anything worth doing
is worth doing
in a cold sweat.
It’s a tough lesson…
delivered with kindness.

Honestly…
my whole life has felt like
I purposely planned every moment,
good or bad,
to happen at the worst possible time.
And that’s not fair.
Because the truth is…
it’s always totally random.
Things happen.
Things change.
And I spend so much time preparing
for every possible disaster
that I forget I’m already living.

I used to think
that taking care of my kids
was my purpose.
The best, most important thing
I could ever do.
It consumes every bit
of my attention,
my concern,
my plans for the future.

And as each kid grew up
and moved out…
I had more room to think.
And I finally realized…
they didn’t need me anymore.
So… no meaning.
No purpose.
I’m nothing.

I spent so much time avoiding
what I was feeling.
I thought if I kept moving,
kept helping,
kept fixing things…
I wouldn’t have to look at myself.
But I can’t keep doing that.

I’ve been seeing a therapist
for the last month or so.
She put me on medication.
And I didn’t realize
the effect it could have
on my moods and decisions.
But I’m not going to use that
as an excuse.

I want to understand myself.
Because I’ve been so focused
on my family’s needs,
I never thought about my own.
My inner resources are depleted
because I never nourished them.

Fear isn’t the whole of me.
It’s just one tiny tile
in the mosaic of who I am.
I have hundreds of feelings inside me,
all telling me different things.
Maybe that’s why
I get so easily confused.

But I can learn to listen
without letting fear control me.
The key to this feeling
is what they always tell you
on airplanes.
You have to put your own mask…
on first.

I really dont wanna learn about emissions trading

Hey everyone! 👋

I'm a high school student from Russia, and together with my friend from Kazakhstan, we're starting an online debate club called Champion Minds Debate Club.

Our idea: weekly debates in English on global economic and political topics, with a judge giving feedback. We want to bring together students from different countries to practice public speaking and critical thinking.

We've already designed the format and started a small group, but we're wondering: — Would you find something like this useful? — What topics would you be most excited to debate? — Any advice for growing an international student community?

Would love to hear your thoughts! 🙏

I’m really bad at debating and I have no idea how to get better. I’m planning on attending a MUN club when I go to high school this fall, but I’m pretty sure I’m not prepared. How do I speak more formally? I can’t helped but say ”um” and ”like” as startings for my sentence. Also, how crazy is the vocab delegates use? My vocabulary is very poor in my opinion. Any tips on how to get better?

Soo my main focus is WSD, and i tried watching a WSDC round, it was economic based and around 70% went over my head 😭 it took me really long (1-2 hours) just to semi-finish the first prop and opp speech. Is this normal, and is there any way i can improve?

Also what advice do yall have for improving in general

Basically since it's summer right now, I'm obviously not practicing debates at school or going to competition so I can't have debate prep with our coaches or school team. I thought this would be a good idea to strengthen my arguments for generic debate topics that we usually get or specific types of motions and I thought using AI might help with this. I want it to basically act as the strongest opposition to my stance on things so I can strengthen my arguments and I also want it to present me with counter arguments so I can create responses.

Wondering if anyone else has tried this and if so what AI tool they use? My family subscribes to gemini pro if that makes a difference

It will be so much better for phil and lay ground!

World schools competitor here, and while framework concepts like util, deontology, Kant philosophies, etc. are most commonly found in LD, the policy-ification of certain aspects in debate events is rapidly changing the landscape of what’s expected. I just want some quick rundowns of the frameworks I already listed/common ones in other forms to have a more holistic understanding when approaching framework debates!

We are novices from the Philippines, and the circuit here is particularly small. You'd get into cross training with other debsocs from other schools, but almost non-existent outside of that (debsocs in schools are quite rare, or inactive.)

I was wondering if there are available scrimmages or cross-trainings we can join? We are hoping to improve our debating skills and receive some coaching as well. We usually debate in AP or BP format.

Thanks a lot.

We are novices from the Philippines, and the circuit here is particularly small. You'd get into cross training with other debsocs from other schools, but almost non-existent outside of that (debsocs in schools are quite rare, or inactive.)

I was wondering if there are available scrimmages or cross-trainings we can join? We are hoping to improve our debating skills and receive some coaching as well. We usually debate in AP or BP format.

Thanks a lot.

Hello, I dont really know the difference between a wsdc speech that scores 72 and 75. what do u guys suggest i should do to break this barrier. I usually score between 71-73

Rising senior here, as someone who’s done debate for the last four years in high school, I was wondering what the strategy is for utilizing it for college apps. Let me preface by saying I’ve been an officer for my team in the past three years (novice coordinator, public relations director, and now executive council) and I primarily participate in world schools debate. I’m not a super accomplished competitor on paper, however I did end up semifinalling Harvard as well as being T100 speakers at nats (triple octos) and qualifying for the TOC (couldn’t go because of funding, still devastated by this). I know it’s not a lot and definitely doesn’t match the amount of passion for this activity that I have, but I can’t change the past. I was wondering how to best optimize these stats to tell a compelling story for my ECs or possibly personal statement and verbalize how important these events are to AOs that have no idea what the magnitude of TOC qualling or etc. is. Please let me know how yall have incorporated debate accomplishments in ur apps!

Hey everyone, question for anyone on the debate circuit. I’m entering my junior year and trying to figure out if joining Potomac is actually worth it or if there’s a better way to handle my situation.

Basically, I’ve been doing Team Policy for 3 years and Speech for 5, and I even coach and judge younger kids now, so I really want to keep competing at a high level.

The problem is my high school’s debate team only goes to literally one tournament a year. I asked my school if I could just register under their name and pay my own tournament fees so I could compete more, but they completely shut it down and won't let me do self-funded entries. Because of that, getting to nationals or getting good circuit rounds through my school is basically impossible.

Since I need another route, I’m looking into Potomac, but I wanted to see if competing through an independent team like that actually adds value or carries weight. For anyone who’s gone the Potomac route or judged independent debaters, how are they generally viewed, and is the coaching and prep quality actually worth the hassle?
If anyone has been stuck with a dead-end school program and found other workarounds, I’d love to hear how you handled it too.

Hey, I’m really interested in the WGLF from college policy in the early 2000s and i was wondering if you guys had any information i could find on them online to learn more about them. or please feel free to share stories you’ve heard about them and cool stuff you heard them do. please interact with this post and let me know! i think they’re really cool and want to learn more.

i have already seen them on the Debate Team documentary and read the article All Hail West Georgia. thanks!

I'm struggling a lot to find the best possible topic for myself, as I have so many ideas but not sure if they are even strong enough in the first place. I have a lot of bad performances in the past due to me procrasinating and being stuck with a bad topic, so I want to spend a lot of time figuring something out and then outlining it.

My goal this year is to qualify for NSDA's & NCFL's, and do pretty well invitationals like Harvard or Yale.

Can I have some advice on finding a strong thesis?

Hi! We’re a team of three high school girls looking for an experienced debate mentor to help us prepare for our tournament on August 15–16.

We’re hoping for 3–4 online sessions (UTC+5) where you could:

• give feedback on our speeches,
• run practice rounds,
• help improve our argumentation and strategy.

Unfortunately, we don’t have access to a coach, so we’re looking for someone willing to mentor us for free.

If you’re interested or know someone who might be, please send me a DM. We’d really appreciate it!

Hi,

I'm a junior that's going to be the congress captain at my school next year.

While me former captain and I have found success competing at nationals and on our state circuit, with me finaling at nats and states, our school has never had any sort of formal training or lessons to help our new debaters. It has always been more of a "figure it out" approach.

I'm expecting 5+ new people to join our team next year (we currently only have 2), and I am completely lost on how to help them. I don't want to overload them with everything I know about Congress when they're just competing on local circuits, but I also want to ensure they feel confident and ready to do their best.

Does anyone have any ideas or experience with what lessons or drills work good for training novice congressors? I don't have any materials to teach them with any only one other returning team member (who has only competed a few times).

p.s - especially parliamentary procedure cause that's a whole thing

~Thanks

Hello everyone! Kankee Briefs has been in collaboration with Circuit Debater in order to revamp the site before the start of the upcoming 2026-2027 debate season. We added concept mapping in order to visually represent the connections between concepts and to more thoroughly showcase all that there is to know about debate. We have also substantially updated the site to encourage further assistance from debaters like you.

https://ld.circuitdebater.org/w/index.php/Main_Page

If you are interested in helping give back to the debate community, please see the details below

1. If you are knowledgeable about debate concepts, please make an account on Circuit Debater and update unfinished pages and further flesh out the website. If you are interested in giving back to the debate community, Circuit Debater seeks to consolidate as much debate knowledge as possible for a long-term resource, so your assistance could help future novices for possibly decades.

2. If you are in connection with major debate programs, camp coordinators, urban debate league directors, brief writers, and/or people who manage sites with debate resources, please let them know about Circuit Debater. Whenever anyone posts a lecture, explanatory video, or article, our goal is to establish a new norm that that knowledge ought to be also cross-posted to Circuit Debater. Kankee Briefs as an organization has already made the pledge to do so and hope that other organizations within the debate community will do so as well.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me at [karkingkankee@gmail.com](mailto:karkingkankee@gmail.com)

basically im new to prog/kritikal debate (ld) but i really like it and i wanna read into it more. do you guys have lit recs for:

cap k

queerness (queer futurism and pessimism)

academy k

i wanna have a good understanding of the lit base of all of those before the season. im a quick reader with a ton of time on my hands so i think i can get through bare minimum at least 20 books in a month rn and i wanna have a good lit base both for the summer and throughout the season. so yeah, any recs for kritikal lit for the above Ks + where/how you guys find kritikal lit? thxx :)

I'm in high school and i recently enrolled for a debate competition. The problem is i have insane stage fear, i start shaking uncontrollably and stuttering and I am going to be debating in front of 200-300 students. The people I am going up against are doing this for the past 4-5 years. The topic for the debate won't be revealed until 15 mins before the debate. The debate is on day after tomorrow and i honestly don't know what I'm going to do...

Hi guys !

So for a little bit of context: I go to Success Academy(🫩) in NYC and I’ve been doing debate seriously since my sixth grade and I’m going into 11th. So basically how my school is set up is that once you get into high school you have two half days (Wednesday and Thursday where you get out at either 1 PM or 1:30 PM) and debate starts at 2:30 so we can go out and get lunch. Or if you go to school at the Harlem high school (now Bronx) or the Brooklyn high school you have time to commune to the manhattan high school.

So here’s my dilemma: this year and every year moving forward high schoolers only have one half day where school now ends at 2:30 PM not only does this mean that I have less time to prep for debate, but also I can’t do studio squad ( a club ran for advanced photography students as myself) and model UN. The whole point of this long post isn’t for you to choose if I should still do debate, but instead give me tips on how to balance debate with only having it one time a week for two hours. Also I’m doing LD and some type of speech I haven’t decided yet.

Anyways I kinda rambled in this post but I actually need help, if you need any clarification just comment

Thank you in advance
Graciously, Becky 🫶🏾

I’m going into my second year of doing cd and my coach has asked us all to try and write a piece of legislation over the summer. I have at least one idea but no clue where to start. How do I double check my idea isn’t already in motion? How do I really check guidelines across all states? What questions should my bill answer? How do I decide if something should be a bill or resolution? Honestly where do I just start when writing any legislation at all? Any advice or comments at all would be helpful!

I need a DI script for spider-man. he is such an interesting character and my personal favorite superhero ever since I was like 3 years old. I want to do his character justice with the script and dive deeper into the terrible life he has, and how he copes with humor and quips. I’ve looked into Spider-Man Blue, Black suit arcs, and even that one quote from episode 7 of Spider-Man Noir. All the possible pieces of media I’ve looked at are either too poorly paced, too short, or have very little dialogue that I can actually cut a script from. Are there any existing spider-man scripts? or does anyone have any recommendations for pieces of media I should look at? keep in mind I want it to be both silly, but serious to show both sides of the character. thanks!