I selected Fashion Marketing as an elective for my sophomore year, so I was wondering if it would be practical to try and join DECA. Thing is, most people I know in my grade who are in DECA are ‘popular jocks’ who don’t care much for academics and more about sports and their social lives. That being said, I know a girl in Lincoln-Douglas debate who is running for President (currently a sophomore), who tries very hard and does extremely well. She is considering dropping out of debate because of her commitment to DECA (they are currently practicing for internationals), and one of the reasons I want to do DECA would be to:
- have fun, because that’s the whole point of me wanting to do it in the first place, and
- improve my speaking skills for debate, which would be the role-play/interview portion
One concern is that it would dominate my life and edge out any time I have to spend writing cases and researching debate, as well as annoyance from the slackers in my grade who participate in the events. Another is that regionals for our state in Debate overlapped with Nationals (?) in Orlando for DECA, which would also mean COMPETITION times would coincide as well.
Additionally, I’m a female Asian American, and will be starting this as a sophomore. Would doing well in DECA, better than in Debate even, not look as good for college because I didn’t start as a freshman? In general, would doing well in DECA be better or worse than doing well in Debate? Can anyone else who attempted to do both give any advice?
Any and all feedback is appreciated.
I just saw your other threads and it sounds you’re looking to branch out from your current activities a bit. If this is the choice that sounds the most fun, then try it.
Even if you win at state in DECA, are you automatically obligated to go to Nationals? I don’t see how they can require it, since some families can’t afford the travel. Also, it may not even be a conflict. You don’t know that you will be selected for state in Lincoln Douglas, do you?
It’s hard to say how hard it would be to do both given that we don’t know how many honors/AP classes you are taking next year, how effectively you study and manage your time.
In DECA, it’s a lot bigger and you aren’t obligated to go, however it’s very impressive to do so since our school does very well. Conference and Regionals in LD, and all other forms of debate for that matter, are collapsed into one since our area has very few people attend, and we do well at state level. This year the date for Nationals was pushed back to the same date for Regionals, and I’m worried that it may happen again in the future and force me to choose between the two.
As for my classes, I’ve heard that the current schedules they have will almost definitely not be changed, but it’s just rumor for now. All classes are open enrollment except for Math up until Algebra II, Driver’s Ed, and sequential electives (you can get teacher approval)
My classes are:
AP European History
Chemistry Honors
Biology Honors
Driver’s Ed/ Gym
Fashion Marketing
English 10 Honors
Algebra II Honors
French III
I’m not worried about my classes other than AP Euro, Chem, Alegebra, and French (kind of).
I actually did congressional debate during my freshman year and dropped it to join DECA this year as a sophomore. I didn’t really enjoy debate that much hence why I dropped it. It would look slightly better if you had joined freshman year, however joining sophomore should be completely fine since peoples interests can change and they would know more about the clubs after freshman year.
I wouldn’t worry about the people on your DECA team as most of the events are individual (not sure about fashion design tho). But yeah I agree that debate and DECA both share a similarity where you have to be a good speaker and really communicate your thoughts well. You aern’t required to go to Internationals (I believe that it goes from state to internationals, no national), and if you had to decide between it and debate then you would probably want to go to the one you believe you’ll do better at, but just qualifying for both is the real achievement. You could also explain your situation to colleges as to why you didnt go to one because of the overlap.
Im not sure if one is better than the other, it would probably depends on how well you do on each. But overall it seems like you would enjoy doing DECA and I say give it a try.