After yet another long day of performing her speech, sophomore Zoe Mirchandani is tired. The day is March 1, approximately 9:30p.m., and she is sitting amongst the rest of the speech team, everyone refreshing their emails every few seconds to find out whether they qualified for nationals. At the very moment it’s revealed that she not only qualifies but ranks first among hundreds of students, an electric celebration fills the room.
Speech is a mostly individual competition where competitors must perform about a given topic, whereas debate is a team competition focused on convincing a panel of judges.
“They are completely different goals, and they’re completely different types of personalities that do either one,” speech and debate coach Grace Olayinka said.
Mirchandani competes in the original oratory category, where she prepares a 10-minute speech about the given topic, in this case, a societal issue. Judges score her based on the content, effectiveness and delivery of her speech.
As for Mirchandani’s personal journey to her own speech, it started in May of last year with her initial idea. She credits the original idea for the speech to her cousin after a lighthearted conversation about their shared multiracial identity.
“She told me that her favorite bar game was ‘guess my race,’” Mirchandani said.
The speech discusses how people view each other’s identity as boxes to check, rather than as humans. Mirchandani seeks to make people uncomfortable with her speech.
“It’s a reflection. It’s almost like holding up a mirror for everybody to see, and then if you don’t like what you see, you can do something about it,” Olayinka said.
Mirchandani helped create the speech aspect of Speech and Debate Club after proposing it to Debate Club leaders last year.
“I wanted to start with speech too. So I said, ‘Can I be

the speech captain?’ And I wrote why I wanted to be it,” Mirchandani said.
As a first-year speech competitor, Mirchandani admits that the competition was daunting.
“They’re super synchronized. They have all these movements down,” Mirchandani said. “It’s actually a little frightening. I was very intimidated.”
Mirchandani admits that ranking first wasn’t easy. From the beginning, she faced challenges with performing her original oratory both internally and externally.
“I think I just have a lot of self-doubt. So I always think I’m going to lose things, even if I am doing better than I think I am,” Mirchandani said.

Mirchandani is not just a competitor. Speech teammate and ninth grader Jaya Jacobs recalls Mirchandani helping her teammates with their own speeches.
“This is my first time doing speech. She’s really helpful with helping me come up with ideas,” Jacobs said.
Mirchandani plans to continue her journey to nationals in June in Des Moines, Iowa, but it will not be easy. She hopes to continue to edit her speech in preparation.
“I want to make my solutions a lot more clear, and I think I want to make it a little bit more timely,” Mirchandani said.