Traveling for tournaments is one of my favorite parts of being a member of USC’s debate team. As this is my senior year, I hope to go to as many tournaments as possible and perform my best at all of them. This also means every tournament I go to this year will be the last time I will go to that tournament so the nostalgic feeling of leaving the activity I’ve been doing for the past four years is starting to kick in.

Last weekend, I went to a tournament at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY. The tournament was one of the major tournaments of the season with about 140 teams from schools all over the nation and thus my time in Lexington was both mentally and physically exhausting, and fun at times. I spent about 5 days in the blue grass state and by the start of the fifth day, I was somehow starting to miss LA. But there were certain parts of Kentucky I thought were interesting. Especially for someone like myself who is really used to life in a major metropolitan area, it was nice seeing that much greenery and serenity. I also know very little about racing, but it was nice being in a state famous for the major championships like the Kentucky Derby and most of the major ads in the airport and on the streets were about racing.It was an overall enlightening and interesting weekend.

My next tournament will be at the University of Nevada Las Vegas next weekend and it will be a tournament where some of our alums come back to, so I am looking forward to seeing the alums and also participate in my last tournament at UNLV.