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I participated on debating teams and in student government, and served as senior class president.

The extra curricular activity in which I was most engaged - debating - helped shape my interests in public policy.

I think it's one of the challenges of modern politics, which is, how do you communicate who the candidate is, and what they really believe, in the short time period you have? And for me, the best opportunity was the debates, and I think I was in real trouble before the debates, and I think the debates helped me a lot.

When you campaign and have to participate in so many debates just to the win the nomination of your party, you've had a lot of practice. You get to figure out as you go from one debate to another where you made your mistakes. By the time you get to the big debate you're pretty polished.

I had always had a deep interest in social science, history. So even when I was in high school, I was debating, and in college debating, and interested in contemporary events.

There was one point in high school actually when I was on the chess team, marching band, model United Nations and debate club all at the same time. And I would spend time with the computer club after school. And I had just quit pottery club, which I was in junior high, but I let that go.

All through my senior year, luckily, I didn't have too many hard classes, just a lot of electives. I was able to spend most of my time at the practice space.

My high school experience was kind of like 'Mean Girls.' It was very much like a bad B movie. 'This is where the jocks sit, and this is where the cheerleaders sit.' And I never really fit in. I guess I was sort of a theatre geek, but the activity that I was most invested in was speech and debate.

I almost became a political journalist, having worked as a reporter at the time of Watergate. The proximity to those events motivated me, when I wound up doing philosophy, to try to use it to move the public debate.

The preparation I had in college was the most valuable.