Speech and debate, for me, is an extracurricular activity that my school (and many others) provide. Speech refers to non-debate events such as Dramatic and Humorous Interpretation, Prose and Poetry reading, Extemporaneous Speaking, Congress, and many others. Debate, on the other hand, involves a pair of teams arguing about a given topic. Which you choose to do (or if you choose to do both) pretty much just depends on personal preference, and personal interests.

I got started last year. I was in a Public Speaking class at my high school, and ironically wasn't very spoken out in it. One of our earliest assignments was to do a 3-to-5-minute prose reading in front of the class. For this, I opted on an Edgar Allan Poe piece - specifically, The Tell-Tale Heart. I later learned that as far as speech and debate goes, that's a piece that's extremely overdone - but regardless, I went in and performed it, and discovered pretty quickly that it was actually something I was good at.

Before long, I joined the actual Speech and Debate club at the school. At my first competition, I performed the same piece, still as a prose reading piece. However, in following competitions I performed it instead as a Dramatic Interpretation (which is slightly longer, and allows for more movement of your body, but also needs to be completely memorized), while choosing an additional piece to do as a Prose piece. I went on like this for several competitions, placing relatively well most of the time. And later on, I also began doing the Debate side of things with a partner. In the end, Speech and Debate was an extremely rewarding activity for me, and I'm happy I did it.