“I’m confident in who I am today because of Speech and Debate.”

Rani Vakharia: “I’ve been doing Speech and Debate for about 4 years and it’s changed me as a person. I learned to be more confident and how to effectively convey my arguments as a whole. Over the period of 4 years, I went from someone who sought validation from others and needed to be “perfect” or “liked” to someone who became happy with who I am, not needed validation from anyone else. Debate had a big part in that. As a woman of color, I’ve often been told that I’m “too aggressive and need to be more calm” which is something that definitely affected the way I presented myself. But over time, I became much more confident and now words like that or anything similar hardly affect me. Speech and debate definitely helped shape me into who I am today.”