Mock Trial - Year Two

I had hoped that my second year in Mock Trial would be easier as I now had some experience. Even though I was prepared, the team had a lot of drama. Ms. Taylor had decided that we needed actual attorneys to help us prepare for the competition. As a result we had three attorneys join the team and make it into a dictatorship. They eventually changed the whole system and were slowly trying to take away Ms. Taylor’s power in the team. After a while, the team was able to convince Ms. Taylor to do away with the attorneys and run the team as we had before.

Although some tension was now gone, Ms. Taylor continued to push us beyond our limits when it came to attending afterschool practices and staying late for hours. Because it was my final year of highschool, I was very busy with college applications so I did not have much time to waste. Although I agree that practices are important, the practices that I was asked to attend did nothing to help me with my position which was very similar to last years.

This year however, we got farther in the competition that we have ever gone. We got third place! Although we lost to the same team as we had the previous year, we still accomplished a lot. This year had been very stressful, which I think was unnecessary but I’m glad that I decided to participate in Mock Trial again.

Interfaith Youth Forum

The Interfaith Youth Forum is a discussion based event that encourages high school students from different faiths to come together and talk about major issues in the world and similarities between cultures. We go to different locations of worship from different religions so that we can get the experience of witnessing different types of services and prayers. This year we had gone to a Buddhist Temple in Yorba Linda, California.

There we were able to see a Buddhist prayer service which included a description and small tour of the altar that was set up inside the main prayer hall. We were informed of the symbolic nature of most of the altar pieces and the meaning of the prayers that they had recited.

Next came the discussion part of the forum. We were split into table which included one person from each faith. After an ice breaker we started answering questions that were given to us. Usually the questions centered around a current issue. With the recent BP oil spill, the questions were all related to the environment and its connection to our religion and life. The responses were fairly similar with a few extremes on both sides.

Through the discussion, we were able to remove some of the stereotypes we had about certain religions and found that there were many similarities between all the religious groups that participated.