The Debater | Eliya Panchova
She is sitting in a sunny room full of people, wearing a simple but also professional-looking outfit. Eliya looks at her teammates and the papers in front of her. With a last enthusiastic and steady glance to them, the room becomes silent. The judge comes in, saying, “It is time. I would like to welcome our first proposition speaker — Eliya Panchova.” The Heart of Europe Debating Tournament in the Czech Republic has begun.
Eliya stands up calmy and gets the position in the center. For the next ten minutes, she speaks persuasively and flourishes hands around her statements with eyes full of eagerness and determination. This is how a typical debating competition begins for the 20-year-old Eliya Panchova.
She rejects the stereotype of debates being boring. “Thanks to debating, you can meet a lot of very interesting people, and you get engaged in various motions,” she says.
Within the popular topics in debating, discussions are politics, economics, international relations, and most of all, some social problems which are just around us. By negotiating “both of the viewpoints and then in the day to make a clearer viewpoint for ourselves on this issue.”
Her journey in debating began back in 2016 when a friend of hers decided to organize a club. Despite her then shyness and indifference to public speaking, Eliya gave it a try. “I was terrible in the beginning, but everyone is completely terrible when they start. I didn’t give up. We were all very motivated, and that is why our club survived,” remembers Eliya, who later became the club president.
She is now the vice-chair of the Bulgarian Debate Association. The organization chooses the National debate team, combines all the around thirty regional clubs, and helps them by sending resources and organizing the main events.
“I personally rely on bringing context during my speeches. It is not about you having good general knowledge. The thing is how you use it, how you turn it into a persuasive argument which makes sense,” says Eliya.
Since June 2020, she has gained a lot of experience with international competitions. “I devoted a great amount of time and energy to become better only for weeks. It was maybe one of the periods where I grew the most for the smallest period of time.”
This resulted in their team qualifying for the World Championship, which gathered more than 500 teams worldwide and was held this year in January. Eliya and her team qualified for the octofinals, which for her was “valuable and fulfilling.”
“Evaluating the pros and cons and overthinking happens to me all the time, partially because of the debating, but mostly because of my character,” says Eliya. “However, when it comes to you defending a sight you don’t personality identify with is kind of hard. You have to put your ego aside for an hour and try to adapt. Debating doesn’t make you agree with different viewpoints. It makes you at least see other’s perspectives.”
In her opinion, debating has also improved her time management skills, dealing with deadlines and stress, which she applies in her life. Her secret is a ritual that she does before important events such as presentations in class or interviews and is called “preparation.”
“I am no longer afraid to speak my mind. Before I joined debating, I had a lot of things to say, but I knew I could never properly express them and decided to silence them, which is the worst thing a person can do with their lives, thoughts, and ideas,” shares Eliya.
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