Our class did two debates in Political Science, one about the electoral college system and the other about the supreme court's decision on the Citizen's United case allowing for unlimited donations to campaigns. In the first debate, I made the opening statement, arguing in favor for the electoral college system. I'll admit myself that I was a little bit unprepared; I figured that I would be able to state my argument by remembering just a few talking points that I thought of beforehand. As it turns out, I'm not as good at improvising as I'd thought, and according to Ms. Shapero my argument was somewhat disjointed and left many questions unanswered. However, by using Ms. Shapero's feedback, I was able to correct the mistakes I made the last time and improve my argument for the next debate. The next time, I spent much more time preparing my statement, and made sure that it had the cohesiveness that it lacked the first time around. As a result, while I lost the opening statement, I won my part of the debate the next time, as the work I put into it paid off in the end.
These two debates were great learning experiences for me, as I was able to correct the mistakes I made in the first debate and improve my second time around. I demonstrated a growth mindset by listening to the feedback from my teacher and using it to do better on my second attempt. In addition to my lesson about putting more preparation into making a more cohesive argument, I also learned the value of learning from experience and the criticisms of others, and of being open to change to constantly improve and avoid making the same mistakes over again.
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