You know when you’re around 5 or 6 years old? Just tall enough to see over the kitchen counter and the dinner your parents are preparing. The helter-skelter shuffle of mail scattered around, your toys making each and every step a minefield for your parents as they work to bring your house to order. You see little moments, the world above you, old enough to observe, but not yet interact, just like looking from a countertop. 

The world always seemed a step away yet SunHee Simon, my debate coach, wasn’t a ladder that helped me overcome that gap, but the blueprint I built off of and the person who shaped the way I view the countertop of our society.

I first “met” Ms. Simon over the horror show that is a Zoom classroom, our brand new debate coach, top of her class, just out of Stanford, so overqualified my second question to her (after “how are you”) was – in completely boorish sophomore-speak – “why are you here?” So shocked was I that someone as accomplished, talented and honestly brilliant as she was going to be my teacher, and continues to this day. 

She merely laughed it off and said she was happy to be here, and I am so grateful she did. I might have hated Zoom, going to class or even writing cases, but Ms. Simon taught me everything I needed to know about being a better human being, she just happened to use debate to do it.

We were blunt objects, unskilled in our attempts yet earnest in our approach. She sharpened us, taking us from unusable butter blades to ever evolving and adaptive chefs knives – ones used for any counter, and to shape the world as we see fit. 

I might have learned critical thinking because I learned how a Universal Basic income influences America’s trade networks, but in doing so Ms. Simon taught me how to observe the bases of volunteering in my neighborhood and how local decision making affects those beyond the region we live in.

She challenged me to think deeply and differently about every issue, especially the ones that mattered to me and to consider different perspectives. She encouraged me to expand my voice and engage with people whose experiences were different from my own. We did become better debaters, but it was a byproduct of becoming better people; more well rounded, greater at assimilating perspectives and shifting the lenses we had on the world so much that if we went back we would be colorblind, so rich and vivid did she make our vision.

Through dialogue and discourse, Ms. Simon taught me the importance of empathy and understanding. She showed me that we are all connected and that our individual experiences and perspectives shape the way we see the world.

I still wonder sometimes what she saw in us, because whatever she saw didn’t bear fruit for a few years. The inevitable refrain of “we’ll get ’em next time” was seared into all of our brains, yet eventually what she believed became reality. We became University of Texas at Austin Champions, University of California, Berkeley Champions, and finally Texas Forensic Association (TFA) state champions. Yet, in the end, that isn’t what I will remember. It’s the bonds and memories she forged for us all, connections stronger than any argument I’ve made and any counter I’ll face.

She taught me not to treasure victories, but to cherish the hysterics we underwent after a round conflating the United States’s continual desperate grab at foreign relations to the empire’s futile attempts to defeat the rebels in Star Wars. I remember the late-night car rides as we sang (screeched) Bruno Mars and remember the steady hand she always provided as we alternately shattered and shone at our tournaments. 

It is as I face the end of it all that I realize what debate, and Ms. Simon, mean to me. I learned to be driven, determined, dedicated – I could research, speak, argue – but what I absorbed was how to be a truly good person, someone who in any consideration of societal math was a ‘plus.’

Albert Einstein told us matter is not created or destroyed, merely transformed. My years in debate had been about taking what I had been given in experiences and lessons and transforming it for the future. What I was taught and given by Ms. Simon transformed and transferred to the upcoming debaters. She didn’t just build a program, she built people. She didn’t just make a winner, she made me.

Follow Sahith Mocharla (@SahithMocharla) and @CHSCampusNews on Twitter.