Tiffany Muse Eng 1101
Throughout all of my years in school from elementary to high school English/ Language Arts has always been my best subject. It was always my highest grade and I was always on a higher reading level for my age. It naturally came easy to me up until my junior year when I joined my mock trial team. When I joined the team I was introduced to a new and different side of language, being legal terminology, and how it is and needed to be used. I knew that I wanted to be apart of the team and compete and was even confident enough in myself to try out to be one of the main attorneys instead of an alternate or a witness. It was well known and believed that having the part of an attorney was more challenging and required more work and preparation than having the part of a witness. Mock Trial was a way of acting and playing a part. Whether the part was as an attorney or a witness, you had to be believable and convincing and prepared in order to win. I tried out and got the part of the attorney, like I originally wanted. I was on the team the year before, but I was not only a witness I was an alternate. This basically meant that I did absolutely nothing the whole competition season and had no need to prepare or learn any of the jargon used. I would spend every single practice of that season doing homework for my classes since it was after school. At this time I lost all confidence in what I thought I could do and felt useless. The following year I wanted to make sure I proved myself before I graduated. I tried again and became an alternate… again, but this time for an attorney. At first I started to have ptsd of the previous year and was about to quit thinking I would not get to do anything for a second year in a row. Luckily enough for me the person I was alternating for neglected his responsibilities and got kicked off the team. I was consistently showing up to practice and was trying to prepare in a way. It was getting close to the first competition and I was thrown into this thing pretty late into the game. I had to write a cross and a direct examination which I have never done before and also had to learn different objections and other legal terminology to sound remotely like I knew what I was doing during competition. Standing in front of a courtroom with an immense amount of eyes watching my every move and ears listening to any possible mistakes that may be made. Standing in front of a judge, who was actually just a practicing attorney, the power they still possessed over me and the validation they owned I needed and wanted in return. This was my thought process in preparation for a competition that I had very little time to prepare for. I was asked to write my own direct and cross examination for the case we were competing as well as an opening statement, which what is used to introduce your side of the case. Needing to be aware of the proper legal terminology to sound legit required me to learn these words and phrases that were being used that I was not aware of which made me feel unfit and in over my head about being able to succeed in this competition and overall field. As a result I would go on quiz let and review certain terms that were frequently used such as the different types of objections and certain wording that was more proper to use when determining what was needed in the case whether it was civil or criminal. I would go over the terms constantly until I remembered what they meant and how they are supposed to be used. During practice I would have to focus on many different aspects of the language I used having to emphasis every point. Not being aware of these terms put me at a disadvantage since it was my first year actually competing and everyone else on the team had experience from the previous year. This discouraged me at first because of my struggle to learn these phrases for the first time when it was just a refresher for everyone else. Nonetheless I was determined and continued to work hard on learning, practicing, and perfecting what I needed to in order to compete. I focused and prepared and my team won our round in the competition. I received praise from the judge as well as the attorneys and coaches that worked with my team. This made me feel that all the hard work I put in was worth it and I was able to achieve my goal of proving myself and my abilities being on the team.
