09/04/2020
"When I walked into college, I thought I had come for well, knowledge. But what I walked away with was the ability to debate and question what you know. Sure, knowledge is power. But debating...debating tempers that power. It takes off the edge of arrogance and self-righteousness that often comes with knowing too much and doing too little. It calms you before making a judgement you'll regret.
IIM-I gave me the gift of debating through Retorica, the IPM Debsoc. I started off as an errand girl of sorts, booking classrooms for practice sessions, and finding out where our precious gavel(see cringy second year picture above) had disappeared again. In a few years, I went on to lead the team and together, we gave it an identity that has remained indelible till date.
But in that process we also created identities for ourselves. When you are part of something larger than yourself, it humbles you.And being part of a debating society in particular, wires you to rationalise every opinion till it become second nature, something that I feel is so important in the unnervingly vile media age that we live in.
Once you learn to debate well enough, you stop believing in the false dichotomy of right and wrong. You realise nothing and no one is completely one or the other. We are all simply forever suspended in the continuum between both."
- Jasmine Kaur
Batch of 2018
