The meaning of debating is to suggest solutions to the problems

27th of December, 2018

I love number 17. Somehow, I like those ending with no.7 such as today. I decided to seriously come back to the writing habit and commit to write one lesson daily from now on.

On some last days in Saigon, I knew a cool guy younger than me, attending the same school with an interesting mindset that we still stay in touch so far. We share the same concern in psychology and critical thinking skill. He has been the only guy that I could discuss with about different topics related to real cases like how to balance emotions or education.

Today, he told me about his experience in the interview round of AIESEC that was similar with my experience to apply for Summer Apprentice Program of YDC Hanoi. I passed all round amazingly but the last personal interview. I did not regret about that failure and appreciated the moments I tried to be my best self. He was put into a dilemma to choose who to die and live. It has been the controversial debate among many contexts to recognize our mindset about justice and our personality, out of the debating skill. His request to debate about this case exposed me an idea to set a new goal for my bucket list this year about practising debating with him.

Then we officially worked on the question: “Is homework important?”. He actually spent little time preparing and explaining his supporting view and I got 15 minutes brainstorming and 5 mintute speaking against his argument. I did know about the limitations of my debating skill and feel a bit worried as I hardly engage in any academic debating environment. I did quite ok but to the extent that I tried to protect my view, as the concept most of people do. Eventually, he taught me about the real meaning of debating is not to decide what is right or wrong but to figure out suggestion for solutions of the issues. Such an idea! His attitude evoked my mind to reflect my answer in which I did not really focus on the solution to the problem.

His conclusion is homework has no fault. The fault is on how people utilize homework to an over degree. That is so true! The short impromtu experience today made my day interesting and kicked my head to grow better.

#day1