Devil's Advocate by Ashley

Devil's Advocate by Ashley - January 2025 Scholarship Essay

“Life’s short and then you die,” yells a devil down the hall. It’s the first week of freshman year classes. The school is ablaze—everyone is on their phones, there are new faces, high energy, lost kids. My high school had hybrid teaching—half in class and half remote streaming from the gym. This teacher is infamous for being loud—bellowing through people’s laptop speakers as they click into Zoom—and unwanted. Ironically enough, as I would soon discover, he was the upperclassman theology teacher. More and more I’d hear about the teacher: “Pray you don’t get him,” or “I’d rather have Mr. Peralta, cause his class does nothing.” Fortunately, I did not have to worry about him until my junior year. 

Imagine, to my surprise and delight, my reaction when I hear an all-too-familiar voice as I enter the debate club introduction Zoom, “Don’t ever defecate on your dinner plate,” it boomed, introducing himself as Mr. Haskell. He has to release one of his one-liners at least thrice a day. At first, I thought they were just rude and discouraging, but as I got to know him more, I realized that they describe who he is. He is the type of person to want to do it right once because there is no time for double-triple revision. He is the type of person who also demands that of his students. “If you don’t want to do the work, then why are you here?” he asked as we passed our communal debate cases around. Dismissing his remarks, I took the stolen cases into the match. Unfortunately, I was paired against my friend who’d written the case. My turn came around, and there I was, faced with defecation. I defecated all over the Zoom screen—nothing would leave my mouth. I lost that round, embarrassingly. This little freshman year experience still haunts me, but as I write anything, so do Haskell’s sayings. 

So unnaturally, I began writing my own cases, creating a passion for discovery. I’d learn to love rabbit holes, questioning, and being the devil’s advocate. Junior year rolls around, and I am excited to share my debate coach with my class. I thought they’d love him, except they were like me freshman year, afraid. Caught between the devil and my classmates, I began to translate his techniques. I’d explain how the yelling was to keep us engaged and how there was truth in his one-liners. Ironically, the first topic we covered was hermeneutics, the process of discovering the truths behind the bible's teaching. In being Haskell’s advocate, I realized he had created in me a love of learning and understanding—a love of analyzing how someone comes about. I had gone from mobile puzzle games as a kid to people puzzles as a teen. Now I have chosen computer science because I desire to understand how people think and apply that to the screen. What will people like the most, and how can I begin to understand them? Life is short, and then you die. There is so much knowledge and not enough time to learn, and so every component of my life, every piece of knowledge gained, is influencing who I am. Therefore, I must optimize my time to where I understand things fully, including both sides of a coin and all sides of a topic.