The turkey grows cold. Well, their turkey does. Mine is long gone. As a five year-old, I paid attention to nothing else, so it had little chance to outlast everyone else’s dinner. The cause of my boredom was the dinner-table conversation about politics, the perennial topic of conversation with my dad’s family. (In retrospect, having cousins in their twenties contributed to this. At least I had my three year-old brother.) My grandparents, German Jews whose pre-war flight led...

It’s 3:00, and the hectic school day has ended, but I have at least an hour left. Debate has been my most time-consuming, successful, and rewarding extracurricular activity. Though I value winning tournaments like the Yale University Invitational and the State Championship—and learn from the other fifteen annual tournaments—the most gratifying aspect of this activity is mentoring the underclassmen. For each resolution, I prepare the team in two-to-three hour prep sessions. I also judge practice debates between Regis...