The Big Speech
By Jules Ghuloum
Have you ever felt so nervous you thought your stomach was going to blow up? Or so afraid you’re going to mess up that you were willing to run away and never come back? Well, that’s what I was contemplating right before doing my speech to the entire Model Congressional Delegation. I had been preparing all night for this conference: taking notes, reading articles, and writing policy. All week was leading up to our big model congress debate on immigration. I was selected to represent the Democratic Senator Maizie Hirono. While researching for my senator I chose to focus on detention camps as my main topic. I wrote multiple main points and sentences for the speech I was going to make the next day and finished my policy statement the night before.
The next day I arrived at the session with my notes in hand. The room looked like a small college lecture room with rows of chairs in front of a big desk. There were placards of senators’ names lined along the desk, they were color-coded by the senators’ party. I automatically noticed my placard was placed in the front row of chairs. Most of the other students were already there wearing formal clothing discussing policy and strategy. Everyone sat down at the seats of the senator they were chosen as. Every senator had a special pen and note pads to send notes to others across the room.
The session started with the chair who is the facilitator of the whole meeting. The chair started with an introduction of procedure and etiquette. Next was our opening policy round. The policy round is where everyone goes around and states their senator’s opinions on the topic. As soon as I heard everyone had to do this I scrambled to get to my notes. I quickly wrote down a few sentences I could read off of when it was my turn. I got more and more nervous as more people did their policy speech and the committee chairman slowly went down the row of chairs. It felt like forever waiting and waiting, the feeling of dread in my stomach getting bigger and bigger. When it finally got down to my turn I stood up and looked down at my notes. The speech sounded something along the lines of “I-I believe… that uh we need to clear the detainment camps in the... Border and ensure safety for… uh illegal I-immigrants.” Thankfully I made it through the policy round mumbling and stuttering during my turn. After the policy round, we moved onto topics. We had a list of 4 different topics we had to debate. During those topics, you would sign up to be on the speaker list. The speaker list is a list of people who will step up to the podium and do a speech about the specific topic. I was too nervous about signing up for the speaker’s list in the first 3 topics.
After at least 3 hours of debate and discussion, we reached the 4th topic, detainment camps on the border. Although I knew I was going to stutter and completely fail at the speech, I decided to sign up anyways. I instantly regretted this decision and was internally panicking the whole entire time leading up to my turn. The list was coming up on my name. At last, there was one more person before me, I knew this was the end. The person before me stepped down from the podium after finishing. My hand was shaking and my forehead was sweating. Right before I was about to step up and speak, thankfully a lonely hand shot up from one of the Senators. Thank god, I was thinking to myself. The Senator called for an unmoderated caucus of 5 minutes. An unmoderated caucus is where you can go anywhere and talk to anyone for the amount of time given. This means I have about 5 minutes to calm down and try to revise my notes so I can pull off the speech. During the unmoderated caucus, I grabbed my notes and walked over to the chair who was sitting next to the speaker’s list. “Is there any way I could take my name off the speaker’s list?” I asked trying to get out of the situation.
“Nope.” she said. I knew that it was inevitable at this point and there was no way of getting out. I spent the rest of the time revising what I was going to say. Before I knew it, the caucus was over, the fastest 5 minutes of my life.
“Senator Mazie Hirono,” announced the chair reading my name off the list. I sat up from my seat and stepped up to the podium, my hands were shaking again. I set down my piece of paper where I wrote down my notes. I looked up and saw all eyes were on me; at least 30 people were staring. I took a deep breath and started reading off my paper. I read through the whole speech without stuttering or messing up once. When I finished there was a round of applause. This was one of the best feelings of my life, the whole Democrat group cheering and the Republicans agreeing. I stepped down and walked back to my seat smiling and excited to participate in the future. The rest of the model congress session was very fun. I assisted in writing and passing bills as well as voicing my opinions on subjects. After my big speech, I was no longer nervous or afraid of public speaking.
