John Connor

I grew up in various neighborhoods on Chicago's South Side, the kind of place where your options feel predetermined before you're old enough to question them. Neither of my parents have college degrees. Neither had made it to the middle class. The path forward seemed clear enough: maybe the military, maybe become a firefighter. Respectable goals. Safe goals.

At 15, I was captain of the football team at Thomas Kelly High School. I spent two-plus hours working out every day. I had the discipline part figured out. What I didn't have was anyone to talk to about the things that actually interested me.

I read philosophy books at night: Nietzsche, Plato, whatever I could find. It soothed my soul. But I had no one to discuss any of it with. No outlet for the questions bouncing around in my head. No framework for thinking through ideas systematically. Just a vague sense that there was more to the world than what I could see from where I stood.

My history teacher noticed something. I liked to argue with other students in class. I'd push back on claims, question assumptions, derail lessons with tangential debates. She probably found it exhausting. But instead of writing me off, she made a recommendation to Scott Dodsworth, the head debate coach.

Scott recruited me. I think the logic was that I needed a constructive outlet, somewhere to channel all that argumentative energy so I'd be less disruptive and more focused. A place where being contrarian was a feature, not a bug.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

It was bizarre. Alienating. Convoluted. Competitors spoke at speeds I didn't know were humanly possible, rattling off arguments about nuclear proliferation, economic theory, philosophical frameworks I'd never encountered. They referenced authors I'd never heard of, deployed terminology that felt like a foreign language, and did it all with a confidence that bordered on arrogance.

I remember sitting in the back of that room feeling a complicated mix of emotions. Confusion. What were they even talking about? Frustration. Why was this so inaccessible? But underneath all of that, something else: admiration. Even awe.

How did they get so precise in their thinking? How did they develop that level of confidence in their positions on genuinely complex issues? How could I learn to think like that?

It was ugly. The spreading, the jargon, the insular culture of it all. But it was also awesome in the original sense of the word: it inspired awe. I saw something in that room that I wanted. Not the trophies or the status. The clarity. The rigor. The ability to hold a complex position and defend it against serious challenge.

I decided to give debate a chance.

I'd done theatre before. I'd been the lead in a few musicals, so I wasn't worried about speaking in front of people. Stage fright wasn't my problem.

Debate was different. There's something uniquely exposing about having your actual thinking, not just your performance, subjected to direct adversarial scrutiny. Every round felt like an anxiety-filled rush. My stomach would knot up. My hands would shake. I'd second-guess every argument I'd prepared.

At my first tournament, I went 3-1. Three wins, one loss. I thought I'd performed reasonably well, all things considered. I had no idea what I was doing, but I'd held my own. When the awards were announced, my name wasn't called. I figured that was fair. I was brand new, still learning the basics.

A week later, I got a call. They'd miscalculated some scores. I had actually won 3rd place speaker in the novice division.

That small validation changed something in me. I was hooked.

But here's what I don't think people understand about competitive debate, especially from the outside: it doesn't get easier. Not for a long time. The better you get, the harder the competition. The higher the stakes, the more intense the pressure.

For over two years, I thought about quitting before every single tournament. Every one. Even as I started winning first place speaker awards. Even as I started making semifinals and finals consistently. The anxiety never went away. I'd lie awake the night before competitions, running through arguments in my head, convinced I'd forgotten something critical, certain I'd embarrass myself.

It wasn't until the middle of my third year that something shifted.

Policy debate, at its best, is one of the most elegant intellectual exercises humans have devised. Two teams, deeply researched positions, rigorous clash, real-time adaptation. It's chess at the speed of conversation. It's philosophy as a competitive sport.

I went to college on a full debate scholarship. I won a championship there too. Debate had taken me from a working-class neighborhood with limited horizons to a world of ideas, opportunities, and possibilities I hadn't known existed.

The trophies aren't the point. The skills are the point.

And those skills don't expire when you graduate. Not a day goes by, literally not a single day, that I don't actively use something I learned in debate.