He recalls the sweat dripping from his forehead as he spoke around 380 words a minute, discussing a subject he spent the whole night rehearsing for. Little did Paly senior Rahul Ramakrishnan know that he would walk out of the building with a feeling of disappointment, despite his 4-3 record on May 5 in the Lincoln-Douglas National Tournament of Championships Debate. He believes that after four years in the activity he loves to hate, he could have ended his debating career on a higher note.

“I failed miserably,” Ramakrishnan said. “After three to four months of intense preparation, I didn’t do well.”

However, Paly debate coach Jennie Savage said Ramakrishnan did extremely well, as he ended with a winning record.

According to Savage, for Ramakrishnan to make it all the way to his latest tournament, held in Lexington, Kentucky along with 78 of the nation’s best high school debaters, is an accomplishment in itself.

“For Rahul, anything less than perfect isn’t good,” Savage said.

Savage said that although Ramakrishnan did not come to debating with natural talent, his hard work has more than made up for it.

“I have never seen a kid work as hard as Rahul does,” Savage said. “Give me a kid who is willing to work over a kid who is naturally talented but won’t work.”

Ramakrishnan says he loves the “high” one gets from winning a round but hates that there are so many variables involved in debate.

“Debaters know that debate has so many variables in terms of who wins,” Ramakrishnan said. “[These include] perceptual, coaching connections, sides, tournament, paradigms, geography, speed, etc., that it is impossible to have control.”

Ramakrishnan claims that he puts a lot of work into debating yet has so little control over it, causing him to freak out and feel stressed.

“You need to read constantly to best understand a topic,” Ramakrishnan said.

The debate team practices every Tuesday and Thursday from 7-9 p.m. However, many debaters, including Ramakrishnan, constantly practice on their own.

“Three hours a night is the minimum requirement [for practicing],” Ramakrishnan said. “One hour for blocking, which is prewriting answers to common arguments on the topic. One hour for casing, which is creating cases on both sides of the topic.”

The most intensive part of Ramakrishnan’s training regimen is known as drilling.

“One hour for drilling either operating cases in the round,” Ramakrishnan said. “Or speed drilling, which is putting a pen in your mouth and reading 18 ages backwards with ‘A’ in between each word, so when you read the page forward you don’t have to understand what you are reading so you can go from 300 to 400 words per minute.”

Ramakrishnan said he routinely went to bed at three or four in the morning after practicing for debate. This cycle first started when some of his friends got him to try debating during his freshman year.

“I didn’t like it in the beginning, but after my first tournament I got addicted,” Ramakrishnan said. “It’s the ultimate game.”

However, according to Ramakrishnan, the small joy he has gotten out of winning doesn’t compare with all he has suffered and sacrificed.

“I’ve given up my mental sanity,” Ramakrishnan said. “The mental struggle in debate makes you reflect on your life.”

Ramakrishnan says that debate jeopardizes relationships due to its large commitment, and because of its competitive nature, it makes enemies out of friends.

He has also spent large amounts of money for coaching, travel, and camps, which he said also make the activity particularly exclusive and elitist. Ramakrishnan said his parents hate debate due to its high monetary costs, its negative effect on his grades, as well as the constant lack of sleep and stress it gives him. Yet Ramakrishnan has continued with debate for four years.

“If you’re going to do something, do it all the way,” Ramakrishnan said. “The only reason I didn’t quit is because I can’t sleep as a quitter.”

According to Ramakrishnan, debate has become an addiction for him.

“Debate gives you pain 99.9 percent of the time because you are hoping the pain will bring you pleasure,” Ramakrishnan said. “But that is so rare.”

Though Savage said Ramakrishnan is well liked and respected by other debaters, Ramakrishnan said he doesn’t always feel the same way towards others.

“The people in debate are the most political and sly people,” Ramakrishnan said. “Because they are trying to use you to play political games, you become a tool for their political status.”

Although Ramakrishnan said debate has given him a better understanding of political subjects and a more analytical mind, he claims it has only given him one life skill.

“It doesn’t give you any skills other than being able to face defeat and keep going,” Ramakrishnan said. Ramakrishnan claims he had ten times as many failures as wins.

Debates themselves usually fall under two categories, local and national debates. Local debates usually last one day and usually about 12 schools attend. A debater usually has four matches and the focus is on persuasive arguments. The judges are mostly less experienced, so the idea is to persuade an average person to see an argument from the debater’s perspective.

National debates can last up to four days and are markedly more intense with as many as six to eight preliminary rounds. The judges are debate coaches, lawyers, and professors. The format is very technical because judges are looking for debaters who are technically correct in their debate rounds.

The wins and losses are tallied with the amount of speaker points, and the winner moves on to the next round. According to Savage, many students competing in tournaments get only two hours of sleep per night because they are always working to improve their strategies and compare notes for the next day’s competition.

Nevertheless, Ramakrishnan has a regretful outlook on the activity.

“If you like something, you will always want to do it again,” Ramakrishnan said. “Looking back, I wouldn’t do it again if I could go back.”