Cracking Down

On this wonderful Canada Day, I have officially reached the halfway point of the class.  I've felt that I've only bee in this class for a day or two, rather than a week and a half.  Now that I'm at the tail end of my time here at Cornell, I now have a more refined sense of urgency in relation to my class.  I have had to sacrifice much of my personal time and sleep over the past couple of days in order to make sure that I am putting myself in a position to be successful in the class.  That philosophy was continued today with another fun, yet exhausting and slightly stressful, day in class.

The session started out simple enough; some of the students that did not present their art pieces yesterday presented them today while occupied about an hour of the class.  Following the  presentations, the class asked Dr. Sharkey and Austin questions regarding tomorrow's quiz, which then occupied another hour of class time.  I didn't realize how fast the class felt at the time, but before I knew it, the clock showed 2:30.  Right then, Dr. Sharkey said that it was time to have another debate.  The motion today was that brothels should be legalized.

There were two debates occurring in two different rooms.  I was a part of the second debate and I, along with Eva, was assigned closing opposition.  We found an isolated part of the building and with the fifteen minutes we were given, we quickly tried to argue why legalizing brothels would be a bad idea.  Collectively, we came to the conclusion that opening up brothels, which first and foremost are a business, would lead to sex trafficking because as businesses try to compete, the owners of the brothels would have the incentive to try and find and exploit women in order to keep their business open.  We also realized that it would be incredibly difficult to regulate brothels and ensure that the women working at these brothels would be free of abuse because when brothels are opened up, there's the possibility that when the doors are closed, the man could exploit the woman.  

After our fifteen minutes were up, we walked into the debate room and watched as our fellow classmates tried to argue for or against the motion.  Because I was one of the last speakers of the debate, I picked up parts of the opening opposition's argument and thought of ways to refute the government's arguments.  Before I presented, I made sure to take note of the closing government's arguments and find ways to refute them.  When I presented, I first made sure to refute the arguments that my opponents made, then I said my own points, which included the sex trafficking and the possibility of abuse.  Once the debate was wrapped up, everyone went outside while the adjudicators came to a consensus.  To my surprise, the adjudicators said that me and my partner put up the best arguments and secured first place!  When I was told we got first place, I was incredibly happy because it proved to me that I improved a little bit in comparison to yesterday.  I got out of class about an hour late because of the debate, but I was okay with the tardiness because it was a nice learning experience in the art of debate.  I made sure to speak with Austin, one of the adjudicators before I left to see what I could improve on.  We talked for a little bit on how to stretch out an argument and overall structure.  

Once I made it back to my dorm, my entire world became studying the textbook and reviewing my notes in preparation for the quiz.  I made sure to eat a full dinner, go to the Cornell cohort meeting, and grab some free boba at Risley Hall in order to clear my stress, but outside of that I cracked down hard on the textbook.  At around 9:30, our floor had a brief floor meeting, then we headed out to see some early fireworks.  The fireworks, personally, weren't mind-blowing, but it was still a nice display.  Even while the fireworks were going off, I was still thinking about my quiz and studying.  Following the display, I rushed back to my dorm and studied until this point right now.  Hopefully, all my studying will pay off and the result will be a great quiz score.  

Rocking the New Hoodies!