Logan Ramsey
Associate Editor
Bianca Ridley said that she wasn’t confident in herself before debate but after she became more outgoing and sure of herself.
“Before debate, I was a very shy person,” Ridley said. “I didn’t talk to anyone at all. I was very introverted, and I feel like debate changed that.”
For Bianca Ridley, high school debate was the prelude for her success at ISU.
Ridley, now a senior political science major and the president of the ISU law club, says debating in high school got her interested in that path.
Ridley graduated from Mountain Home High School and participated in competitive public forum debate and said that she made strong friendships in debate and after that, she became more confident in herself.
“I feel like I really found a group of people that I had a lot in common with and I just clicked with which I never really had before I joined debate,” Ridley said, later continuing, “From there I became a more confident person.”
After that, Ridley said she tried to convince whoever she could to debate because of the benefit it gave to her life.
At her first debate tournament, Ridley said she was nervous, but her partner and her went undefeated, and after that, she felt more comfortable.
“The better you do, the more you like what you’re doing,” Ridley said.
Ridley made it to nationals and the state competitions her sophomore year of high school.
She said that from those competitions, she made bonds with debaters that she wasn’t close to before and learned more about them.
“I went with people that I wasn’t really super close with in the debate team, but I got to know them really well because you spend an entire week with (them),” Ridley said.
Ridley also said that it was interesting to see how other debaters from around the nation debated and the differences in strategy and style they used.
She said that communications classes and research papers came easier because of the skills that she learned in debate.
Originally, Ridley planned on being a lawyer, which is why she joined the law club, but she changed her plans slightly. Ridley is thankful to debate for giving her that direction in her life.
“For the longest time I had a clear path of what I was going to do after college and what I was going into because of debate,” Ridley said.
Ridley now plans on attending graduate school at ISU, and then after that, she would like to go work for a special interest group as a lobbyist in Washington D.C. and eventually run for state office.
“She is a person who is engaged,” said Thomas Eckert, advisor to the ISU Law Club. “As president of the Law Club she takes significant action and she doesn’t just wait for things to happen.”
Ridley is most interested in working for gender equality, environmental, and racial equality groups, and she said she would love to study the effect that female supreme court justices have had on gender rights in America.
“With debate, I found my calling,” Ridley said.
