Transcript: Adonis Wazni on Debate, Science Research, and Leadership

Good morning, and welcome back to Late Start Show. Today we are here with Senior Anis Wazni, captain of the super successful public foreign debate team, in my opinion, president of the Student Investment Committee, and IOSF and ISEF qualifier. How are you doing today, Anis? Doing very well.

How are you, Charlie? Doing great. Yeah, glad to have you on the show. Well, Anis, we always start talking about how our guests join the U.S. community.

So can you tell us that story of when you first joined the U.S. community and the story of how you ended up here? Well, I'm lucky enough and fortunate enough to be a lifer. So I'm going to be completely honest. My memory is not good enough to remember the first days of what was a kindergarten.

And I got to where I am today by staying at U.S. and not leaving. You know, what's really cool is both you guys both have brothers at U.S. It's a really kind of unique experience. What is it like having a brother, especially a younger brother, at university school?

And kind of how has he grown up with you at U.S.? That's a very good question. Well, I would say that because of how the grades are divided up, and especially because he's three years younger than me, there's honestly been a lot of separation between us. One came to, you know, lower school to middle school, middle school to high school.

There's a lot of separation there. So this is the first time where I actually see him on campus on a daily basis. and especially because he was, you know, following in my footsteps, I guess, and joining the debate team. I feel like I'm seeing him grow more as a student and seeing him grow more as a debater as well. And I think it's really interesting to see how our, even though our personalities, I would say, are pretty different, we have similar interests and also a similar drive to do whatever we can as well as we can.

Yeah. And I know you didn't, you said you don't remember, obviously, of those early experiences, but do you maybe remember an early risk that you took, whether that's joining a new club or putting yourself out there, that ended up paying off for you? Well, I would say that the earliest club that I joined that I sort of stuck with was in eighth grade year. It was just coming out of COVID, essentially, and I decided to join the debate team.

I would say that usually, especially before that, I was a more introverted person. I didn't really talk with Al. We didn't talk that much. But by doing debate, I learned how to do a lot more of elocution, learning how to do enunciate much better.

And I'd say that really helped me with basically every single endeavor that I tried to do. Well, you mentioned you started as an introvert. Now you're leading our school spirit team. How did that happen?

Well, that happened because, you know, Ms. Coy and Mrs. Strachan were looking for people and I decided, you know what, why not? I'll just throw my hat into the rink and see what happens.

So I made application. And as I said, even though I'm not, you know, the most active person in terms of leading tiers, I'll admit that, but I do handle things behind the scenes in terms of writing announcements, also working on what's hopefully going to become a slideshow to display recent sports results for the spring season. I hope that by doing this, I'm able to help the community in any way that I can. You know, in middle school, you were already doing pretty serious research.

You know, NeoSaf talks about the fact that you, like, earned superior in a bunch of different projects. And then you kind of now, once you're in high school, have gone on to ISEF. How has kind of science research really stuck with you and how has it been a big part of your U.S. career? That's a very good question.

I would say that I did a lot about science stuff, honestly, on a whim. When I came to eighth grade, it was really required because part of intensive science that we had to do something for NEOCEF. So once again, as usual with my experience, I threw my hat into the ring, did basically everything that I could to make a very good science project, and I was lucky enough to win the grand prize in middle school my eighth grade year. And then, in terms of high school, even though I've enjoyed all my science classes, when it came to actually competing at a science fair, I just decided during my junior year, you know what, let's try it again.

What am I going to lose? I have some extra time, especially because my sister started driving. I had some extra time there. So I was like, okay, let's try it, and I did join the independent research program.

Mrs. Voinovich and Dr. Laus a lot, and I was able to qualify to the International Science and Engineering Fair by winning the grand prize in material science at NEOCEF. I believe your project had something to do with biomimicry, is that correct?

Yeah. Can you explain what that is? So my science fair project for last year was involved in biomimicry, and that's basically using what we see in the natural world to influence design choices that we make with material sciences and stuff that we use on an everyday basis. So my project was looking at these massive container vessels, which everyone knows are absolutely essential.

And at the end of the day, they're already pretty efficient in their own right. But what I found that is something that they're lacking is helping the environment because they actually create a lot of noise pollution as they move through the water. And while there's lots of research on adjusting the props and propellers to make sure that they have less what's called cavitation, which is the formation and destruction of water vapor bubbles, I found that there was virtually no research being done on the surface, on the hulls of these vessels. So I looked at penguins, I looked to sharks, I looked to water striders, I even looked to golf balls as inspiration for how I could use texture to actually make sure that it moves through the water more smoothly.

What did you find? What was the texture that helped the best? So I found that a combination of microscopic and macroscopic texture ended up working the best. So I use six millimeter convex hemispheres as well as a hydrophobic spray, which is commercially available.

So that combined both microscopic and macroscopic texture to achieve an up to 10% reduction in sound and up to 70% reduction in wake and ideal conditions. You know, the transition to upper school for a lot of us is pretty hard, but it sounds like it was kind of easy. But what changed the most for you, whether it was the academic workload, the social environment, or just kind how you carried yourself I would say that I would say it the extracurricular workload that changed a lot because at the middle school even though we have lots of different opportunities I would say at the high schools where you really pressured by and encouraged by your friends your teachers and even teachers which aren't necessarily teaching your class to get out there join a bunch of stuff and I would say that throughout my high school career I've been trying to take every opportunity I can because at the end of the day we all go to U.S. and it's a really great privilege to be here So I decided that while I'm at university school, I'm going to do everything to make sure I get the most out of the education here, both inside and outside of the classroom. Now, high school debate from kind of experience is a lot different than middle school debate.

So what was that transition like? And we'll talk about a little bit later, but definitely partner switching a bunch is a huge part of your kind of public forum debate career. So when did kind of speech and debate in the high school level enter your life? And what was the transition like?

Well, yeah. So I mentioned earlier that I joined during my eighth grade year. So when I came to high school, I decided that speech and debate would be a quick choice. In terms of what event I wanted to choose, I stuck with public forum throughout because I decided that being able to work with a partner, having the partner dynamic is good in terms of learning to work through differences and also get input from people who think differently from yourself. and I would say that in terms of your question about how it's really affected my life was that right yeah like how did it kind of change and what is it kind of brought to you yeah so what I really learned a lot is I touched on this earlier is learning from other people the main reason why I joined the public forum team in particular is because I saw that there were a lot of amazing characters there like my sorry my freshman year there was Sam Matthews who's involved in a bunch of different service activities with the Spanish Honor Society as well as other stuff.

Aiden Crisnani, of course, he ended up being my partner briefly, and I really looked up to him in terms of someone who was super smart, very articulate, and basically was a genius at debate. And going forward, I decided that the way that I could contribute is A, showing up every single day, even if I did, you know, kind of suck at a tournament previously. B, working with my partners, no matter who they were, and trying to find a partnership that actually worked for me and whoever I was with. And then C, hopefully being able to, no matter what I was doing, try to set a good example of having a good work ethic and also being able to speak confidently, speak clearly, especially with my recent role as captain.

And I've never done debate, but I have to imagine debating with a partner. It takes a level of communication, like synchronization, because you can't be debating different things. You have to be debating the same argument. So what has that taught you to work with someone else and try to form an argument that you can both argue together?

Yeah. So I would say that working with a partner is one of the most unique parts about public forum. Policy, you do the same thing, I guess. But in terms of my experience, at least, it teaches you a lot about having to have disagreements, but also having sometimes to be assertive.

Like, okay, even though you think that you might be able to do this, I personally have more experience, So we're going to go for this way and we're going to go for this rhetoric and this is what we're going to happen. So there's a lot of communication. As you said, there's a lot of collaboration, but there's also a lot of standing up for yourself, resting on your own experience and being able to, as you said, formulate an argument together while using both minds separately in order to make the best way forward to the ballot. You know, your partnership this year has led to a lot of success with you actually just this past Saturday qualifying for nationals.

And we'll get to that a little bit later. But has switching partners ever been really a blessing in disguise? Like, has it forced you to grow or learn something that you may not have known earlier? And what are some of those really key lessons that you got from Aiden and Sam Matthews and a lot of these partners that you've had in the past?

Yeah. So I would say that, unfortunately, and I guess fortunately, switching partners has been a major factor in my debate career. I've had a total of, I think about 13 different partners over four years. And by the way, if you ever go into public forum, don't do that at all. but as you said Charlie I think that there is some benefit in this I got to learn from a lot of different debating styles I got to learn how to see through different differences in opinion but also it also taught me that sometimes at the end of the day no matter everyone's best intentions sometimes two people just don't work well together and you need to be able to a choose your team and be be able to be a little bit flexible but at the same time not compromise your own success, not compromise your own way of thinking just to make it work because there's going to be someone that works really well for you and there's someone that's going to be not as good for you.

And both me and my other partners found, I guess, happiness in finding someone else that they could really work with. And I guess that especially this year, my partner Gavin Chan, he's a sophomore, but he's been working really, really hard. Honestly, sometimes he carries me He's through a few tournaments here and there, and he's been really receptive to what I've been saying. And I really learned a lot from him in terms of being able to speak slowly, talk a lot about how you can address a judge directly, and also making it as clear as possible for maybe a less experienced judge.

Once you get into those top debate competitions, I have to imagine everyone's pretty intelligent. Everyone can articulate what they want to say. So what really separates a great debater from just a good debater? That's a very good question.

Well, I would say that in order to be a great debater, which I won't claim that I am, but there is a lot of preparation that goes in. It's essentially like any sport. You do a lot of preparation, you train a lot, and then you have to go perform. And then when it comes to the actual performance part of it what I like to do personally and I like to use a lot of alliteration I like to use a lot of rhyming in terms of making my rhetoric I guess I learned a lot of that from my education at university schools English programs And I would say that being able to decide what is really the most important and what you think the judge has been paying attention to the most, just by looking at, you know, the facial cues, how they react when you say a certain thing, that's really important in terms of how you're going to decide how you're going to finish the round out of the start, I guess.

What classes have you seen that you've taken during your time here at US that have shown up in those debate rounds or in your preparation? So I would say most recently, a lot of stats has appeared because a lot of people bring up random statistics and then they just say that, oh, it's from a survey, oh, it's from a blog post, oh, it's from all these different sources, which aren't really the most beneficial and the most you know trustworthy also just being in science class in general has given me the ability to look at other people's sources and see how they actually had their methodology and how I can really critique that in terms of adjusting how many variables their own methodology actually accounts for and then I would say that as I said earlier English class has really helped me a lot in terms of being articulate looking for things that sound good to the audience and will be easily memorable, and as well as, I guess, economics also helped me as well in terms of being able to look at everything through a relatively utilitarian standpoint as most public forum debates go. You know, another activity you're part of was the Upper School Academic Challenge Team. What has been your growth with that throughout the years, and what do you think you bring to the team?

Well, I would say that even though I'm not very good at memorizing specific moments in time, I am lucky enough to pick up on things here and there. So I would say that I'm the least specialized out of everyone on the team. I'm probably am the most inconsistent overall, but when it comes to obscure stuff about some random book or some random term that comes up from science, I'll be your guy. I'm the one who's going to get that random toss up.

And now let's move into another thing you do, which is the student investment committee, where I believe you're president. And so how did that become part of your U.S. life and what interests you about markets and investing? Well, that became part of my U.S. life in my end of my freshman year, beginning of my sophomore year when I applied. Like most of the things that I started for the first time, I honestly didn't know a lot about investments.

I just decided that at the end of the day, if it's something that I hear at the end of every single news report as I'm driving into school, it's probably something important I should be learning more about. so I decided that I needed to learn as much as I could and because of the great privilege that the Student Investment Committee allows us to have in investing real money and working with advisors like Mrs. Frankel and Mr. DeGrandes I really learned a lot and I believe that it's something that I want to be pursuing going forward because at the end of the day no matter what field that you're working in money is such a large part of it for better or for worse so I think understanding what people value, how they value it, and where they think things are going to be going in the future is really important skill, no matter what you're doing. You know, as a member of the student risk may, I'm very interested in the fact that as president is your main kind of goal, obviously, portfolio, or portfolio performance, or is it kind of building the culture that like teaching younger members how to think?

Obviously, we've been around since 2009, 2008. So there's this large tradition of students thinking critically about certain sectors, certain stocks. So what do you really want to instill in the younger members to kind of carry on with the rest of their career? Yeah.

Well, as I said, I won't claim to be an expert in investments because I'm still a student. So I won't say that I'm instilling them good values here or there. But I will say what I've been trying a lot is to ensure that we have conversations. Sometimes, as you may have known Charlie, as you definitely know Charlie, sometimes conversations go on for a lot longer than we're expecting.

We end up booking one week for talking about certain rounds of buying, but it extends into over or almost three weeks. And I think that at the end of the day, having more conversations, learning how to advocate for your own position, as well as understanding what other people are thinking and also why they're thinking that way is really beneficial, not just for proposing investments or divestments, but also basically everything that you're doing in life will involve talking with other people, forming a plan, deciding what will be best for the future of the student investment committee, and ensuring that everyone has their own voice because everyone puts in a ton of effort to the student investment committee. Everyone does their best effort. So it's important to ensure that everyone's being heard.

Yeah. And I mean, we've heard about so many of the things that you've done here, such a wide range, which is very impressive. When you look at college, what do you see yourself doing in the future? And how are you bringing maybe some of those activities into that field?

What are your future aspirations? So my future aspirations are to probably work in management, maybe do a little bit of engineering just to combine my interests in, you know, financials, as well as my interest in being able to build something new and then building something that will last. And I would say that what I'm looking forward to going forward is taking on leadership opportunities, but also taking on different activities where I can learn. As I've been doing my entire high school career, essentially, when you look at my college application, honestly, it doesn't really tell one clear story.

But if you actually look through it, if you are understanding what I hope that they probably understand is that I really enjoy being a student. I understand that where I am in high school and where I am going to be in college are unique opportunities to learn from as many people as I can to meet as many people as I can and have many varied experiences because I know that once I graduate then I be forced to specialize and then the horizons will sort of narrow more specifically But I see that right now where I am and where I going to be in college is really an opportunity to learn. You know, you're in your 13th year of this place. So going into your senior year, what was your mindset kind of at the beginning of the year?

Were you trying to enjoy everything more? Were you locked in on your goals and ready for the future? I would say I wanted to finish it strong because university school has given so much to me. My parents have sacrificed a lot for me to be able to attend the school.

So I wanted to put in 100% effort in every single one of my classes and just finish strong, continue to live up to the standards that I've set for myself, and continue to live up to the standards that university school has set up for me. You know, you've kind of finally stepped into this major role in the Speech and Debate team with leadership as the president, as you talked about. And you've now hit your goal after all these years and all these partners of kind of qualifying to nationals. This past Saturday, what was that feeling like when you knew you kind of made it to the next level?

It was great, honestly. I mean, this was the first year that I qualified to states and also the first year that I qualified to nationals. So it was a really big achievement for me personally. I saw it as really a result of not getting discouraged, really sticking to the end goal of learning at the end of the day. because when you do speech and debate, there's some things here and there, some esoteric rules that aren't really going to help you going forward.

But what is going to help you going forward is learning how to stick to a goal, learning how to be resilient no matter what, and learning how to learn from other people, as I said, time and time again. So I'd say that it's a combination of a lot of hard work, a lot of luck, honestly, and it's something that I'm really proud of and really happy to have accomplished. and this community is special because we have people that thrive in so many different arenas we have athletes we have speech and debaters we have all these different things that people succeed at but at the same time we're one community i think we're at our best when we're all together so how has your experience been in a community that has so many dynamic people many that go in between those categories so how's your experience been with all of these different communities and people and interchanging in such a special community Yeah, I would say that's a great observation. I think that U.S. is really special in, you know, catering to excellence in every single one of these fields. And I would say that being able to learn from so many different people with so many different interests and to learn that a lot of people are honestly, you know, like me, where they have different interests and university school gives them the resources necessary to pursue all of them, whether they be sports, science, speech and debate, etc.

And I would say that's really helped my own personal growth. And if I was able to help other people grow as a community through my work at the prep squad and also through my work at the student events committee, I would hope that that's something that I want to leave behind if I can. And then one more thing, your senior speech has gotten a lot of love that you did this year because you shared about your name. And what made you choose something that personal and what was the core message that you wanted people to walk away with?

Yeah, well, I've been fortunate enough once again to be in university school where everyone is really open and willing to learn the name and how to pronounce it, Adonius. but the reason why I wanted to give a speech on it is because this luxury isn't really afforded to most people I mean in my speech I talked about how my mom Dr. Alice Kim is often assumed for either not being a doctor because she's a woman or assuming that she has my same last name because some people most some women are you know traditionally to take their husband's names and I thought that was really important to mention that not only is the pronunciation important, but also understanding that people might not have the name that you assume them to be, people not be the person that you might assume them to be. So you actually have to take the time, as lots of people have done at university school, to get to know me, to get to know the person that you're speaking to, and to get to know the person and understand who they are when you're speaking of them, especially when they're not there to defend themselves. Well, finally, and yes, at the end, because it's the most important thing, you know, you put yourself in a lot of situations where you have to be consistent, whether it's debate prep, real responsibility, in all of your leadership roles and research that obviously took a lot of patience and discipline.

On the hard days when you're tired, overwhelmed, or you don't just feel like making any sort of progress, what is your why? What's the core kind of driving factor behind everything that you do? That's a very good question. Well, I would say that there are definitely allowed to be hard days where you're not really willing to do a lot of stuff.

Everyone deserves a break time and again. And I think that having a sort of work hard, play hard culture it's really necessary that you can enjoy yourself when you have a break and also you know put in the hard work so you actually deserve that break but I would say that the one thing that's really kept me going is just the decision that if I'm going to do anything I'm going to try my best no matter what even if it doesn't pan out how I explain expect it to be sorry I put in the work I put in the effort and I tried my best and there's nothing really I can change about that and also having the idea that people look up to you, like I think about my siblings, my younger brother and my younger sister, they look up to me. And I think about the people that have made my education at U.S. possible, my teachers, the peers around me, and especially my parents. I think that they all deserve to see me putting in the effort.

I deserve the effort myself to see myself succeed. And I think that at the end of the day, if you try a little bit harder, what are you going to lose but what are you going to gain well and he's it's been great having you on the show today thank you so much for taking the time to share insights and experiences with us true listeners thank you so much for tuning in for this episode late start show and we will hope you'll join us next Wednesday for another episode thank you thank you