[ Cheers and applause ]
-Thank you and welcome.
I really appreciate you all being here.
If you all don't know who I am,
my name is Mr. Hunter, Jerome Hunter.
I'm one of the co-founders of Seattle Story Collective.
I'm here alongside my partner, my friend,
the other co-founder of Seattle Story Collective,
and we are just so excited to be here to create history,
witness history,
and feel the power of the young voices
that have participated in our first ever
cohort of the Seatown Story
Collective TEDx student speaker event.
What's really meaningful to us
is that with all of the TEDx events that have taken place,
this is one of the first that is specific
to centering youth voices,
and it's done through our organization,
Seatown Story Collective, and we operate in three principles.
Our first principle is the power -- centering
the power of first-person narrative.
We draw from oral historians, poets, authors,
journalists, the youth, people with lived expertise.
And so this is something that is really meaningful to us.
Our second core value is amplifying
and centering historically silenced voices.
And so this could be -- that's okay --
youth, people of color, LGBTQ, single parents,
people who might have a distinguished taste
for pickles and peanut butter.
Anybody who might be on the margins that need to be heard,
right, we want to center that.
And the last is really having a deep,
true belief in the possibility and potential of our youth.
As former educators and former classroom teachers,
we see it every day
and it's just giving them the opportunity,
holding space
for these young people to share their experiences.
And we always say,
"Speak the truth even if your voice trembles," right?
And if your voice trembles a lot,
feel free to use note cards.
We're going to welcome our first youth to the red dot.
So our first presenter is a 15-year-old student
at the University of Washington Robinson Center
UDub Academy Program.
They're an enthusiastic member of the UDub Debate Society,
a former national level debate competitor in high school,
and they're about to share with us
their unique relationship with Lady Luck.
Please welcome Ada Lu to the red dot.
-I like to think I had a pretty typical
high school experience dealing with MCQs and SAQs and DBQs
and social cues, grinding my extracurriculars,
starting a cult, attending school dances.
Okay, so maybe not all of those.
I didn't attend any school dances.
I mean, what do you take me for, someone socially competent?
But no.
While my peers were getting dates
and getting those dates to go in their fancy clothes
to homecoming on the weekends,
I was dressed up in formal clothes
to go to speech and debate tournaments.
And somehow amidst of turmoils of learning
to become a speech and debater,
I had somehow started a cult dedicated to pouring
water onto trees.
Yeah, there's me and my loyal disciples engaging
in behaviors of worship.
See, it all started with a game of Super Mario Party.
And if you've ever played,
you know, it's essentially like a digitalized board game.
And like any other good board game, it is basically all luck.
So after I shot from dead last to first place,
I was crowned as the one favored by Lady Luck.
Just as an offhanded comment,
I have never taken anything offhanded in my life.
I decided I was not just going to enjoy Lady Luck's favor,
I was going to curry it,
which is what led me to this pouring water behavior.
You see at every speech and debate tournament,
before I get to discover
whether I made the final elimination round,
I would go outside, get some water,
and pour it on the nearest bush or tree
and pray that Lady Luck would please,
please bless my speech results.
And shockingly, it was working.
Over more than a dozen tournaments,
I broke to finals and at least one event every single time,
and the practice started catching on.
As you can tell,
the rest of my team started adopting my bizarre rituals,
seeing that it was surprisingly effective.
And soon, I was leading half a dozen of my fellow speech
and debaters outdoors to pray to Lady Luck at every tournament.
But while the cult was essentially in a life
of its own, I took this a step further.
I started praying before every important significant event
in my life, whether it be an important presentation,
a school project, or a big exam. This all came to a head
at my first calculus midterm in college
where I was running late.
And I was like, you know,
"I'm sure it doesn't really matter
if I put any water on a tree because, to be honest,
I'm just going to do math.
It has nothing to do with whether I pray to Lady Luck."
That midterm single-handedly broke my two years
of no crying streak.
But as I was bawling my eyes out over horizontal asymptotes,
I came to wonder,
"Does Lady Luck actually have an effect on my success?"
Surprisingly, yes, she does,
but most likely not in the way you think.
Stanford's Department of Psychology
conducted a study investigating a gene
that is known to make someone be less proficient at exercise.
So first they had all of their volunteers run on a treadmill
and then measured their CO2 to O2 exchange rate,
which is just a measure of
how well you're doing cardiovascular activity.
And then they genotyped their volunteers
to see who actually had this gene deficiency.
Afterwards, they split the volunteers into two groups,
regardless of whether they actually had the deficiency,
then one group were told that they had the deficiency
and the other group wasn't.
Then all of them ran the treadmill test again.
And here are what the results show.
This red bar is the group
that were told they were genotyped for being deficient.
And let's remember these people weren't actually all deficient
and all of them performed significantly worse
while the other group had a slight marginal improvement
from being told that they were more protected for exercise.
For reference,
that dot over there is
how much this gene actually matters in the grand scheme
of things on how fit you are.
And that dot to your left -- I mean, right,
your right shows how much being told about this matters,
which means that overall, this proves
that what you believe to be true about yourself
has great impacts even on your physical being.
It's not just these volunteers felt more tired
or gave up more easily, no.
Their bodies were physically less proficient
at processing oxygen
when they believed they were going to be less proficient.
And so after learning this, I came to wonder,
how can we take this principle, the idea of the placebo,
the idea that having a belief in an anticipation
something will happen will change our outcomes.
And so as your favorite novice cult leader,
I come to present to you
the 3.5 steps to gaslighting yourself into success.
So first, Step 1; the trigger.
The trigger in a medical setting
is what you think as the saline solution
or the pill that does absolutely nothing.
When you're trying to manufacture your own placebo,
such as in my case, putting water in the local foliage,
it's important to keep three things in mind.
First, it has to be something intentional.
You have to take intention to take this action.
Second of all,
it has to have something with a clear purpose
and preferably with a clear reminder.
And finally, it has to be very easy
because it's not easy, you won't do it.
Now, this makes clothing a good choice.
It is well documented
that putting on a certain types of clothes
puts you in a certain kind of mindset.
For example,
the Journal for the Experimental Social Psychology
discovered that when 70 participants were taking
a memory test and half were given lab coats and half
were not given lab coats,
the people wearing lab coats did better.
However, it's especially notable that only those told
that it was a lab coat and not something
as associated with good intelligence such as
a painter's smock, saw this improvement,
which showed that by having this constant reminder
that they were representing something,
one smart and someone competent,
they were actually embodying these traits in themselves.
In the book "The Alter Ego Effect" Todd Herman takes
this a step further claiming
that it's possible to make yourself almost like
a whole alter ego, a version of yourself
that's more competent, confident,
and assured by putting on a piece of clothing
that moves you to the mindset.
Just like Clark Kent tearing off his shirt to reveal
that he's actually wearing spandex
and his underwear on the outside suddenly becoming Superman,
you too can unlock your better identity,
just preferably with your shirt intact.
We can see examples of celebrities using this,
such as Kobe Bryant who had the identity of the Black Mamba,
which he took on when he was on the court,
and he claimed that this made him more focused
and a better basketball player
while separating it from his day identity.
The clothing and the action of stepping onto the court
put him into a whole different mindset
that was able to change his performance.
And so we move on to Step 2, the ritual.
The trigger is only as effective as the number
of times you use it.
And the main magic of the placebo effect
in gaslighting yourself into success
is that you can incorporate your placebo to
not just be an element that you do,
but rather an element of your identity of your strategy.
Once you begin associating your trigger with doing well,
you will then do even better. For example,
whenever I need to clean, I put on a nice skirt,
I put on a blouse, and my mom tells me,
"Why are you dressed up in formal clothes
to like dig socks out from under your bed?"
And while this might be a little bit silly,
the reality is by putting on a different set of clothes
and doing this every time I need to clean,
I associate dressing up nicely as my cleaning attire.
But this puts me into the mindset to be able to clean.
Furthermore, Harvard Medical School explored this in a study
where they took pills that were literally labeled placebo
and gave them to people who were suffering from migraines.
Even though the pills had placebo written on them,
the migraine sufferers still saw a 50% reduction in pain.
It was the action, the ritual,
the daily taking of the pill
that was resolving some of their pain
and not just any actual active ingredient.
So it's with consistency and discipline
that we are best able to even trick ourselves
into doing better.
Which brings us to Step 3; the belief,
arguably the most core component of the placebo effect.
Because the idea is that by believing you are
something greater, you become something greater.
Hypnosis is an altered state of mind
where you're essentially just more suggestible,
but what do you think is the number one factor to
whether someone can be hypnotized?
It's whether they believe they can.
And for the same reason,
people who believe they can manifest good luck their way
or that they believe that they can pray to Lady Luck
and get better results in their speech are the ones
who will actually see this.
It is by believing more than any of the other elements
that we are actually able to achieve great success.
But finally,
the .5 that almost everybody was likely questioning, the reality.
Here's the fact, as soon as I stepped on the stage
and started my talk, you were probably thinking,
"But it's just a placebo."
I've named it as the placebo. And really,
there is no concrete tie to being able to change
your fate at the drop of a hat.
And you know what? This is true.
You will not magically learn chemistry.
You will not fix your broken leg.
And you will not wish your way into that job you wanted,
but that interview you botched.
But here's the other reality:
you probably aren't achieving most of your goals anyways.
Because here is the reality,
whatever you want to do is hard to do,
and you probably haven't gotten very far at it.
But how much of the reason has been
because you've been holding yourself back?
For example, if you want to start a business,
you can't start by thinking,
"Most startups come to fail."
You can't begin by thinking that,
"I might go bankrupt over this."
I'm not saying that it's not important
to have contingency plans,
but when we make the contingency plan the first plan,
we rob ourselves of the ability to take that leap
to actually achieve the things we want.
Because you cannot hurt yourself by believing you can,
but you do hurt yourself by believing you can't.
So even if it seems silly,
the placebo can be the first step in setting
your intention of believing you can.
And maybe you can, whatever it be.
I want to get into medical school;
maybe you want to write a book; you want to start a business.
All of it starts by believing you can.
So I am not a theologist.
Maybe Lady Luck is only as real as the placebo she gives me.
Maybe throughout all of human civilization,
we've all been worshiping the same higher power,
and I've just given her the name Lady Luck.
Or maybe who knows, I am the prophet and Lady Luck
is the one true religion.
I don't know, this is not my job.
And frankly, it doesn't matter very much.
So do whatever makes you more successful.
Go put on a lab coat, go put on a nice skirt and go clean.
Go eat a tic tac and write placebo on the can.
I don't know, whatever it is.
But sometimes delulu really is the solulu.
Thank you.
-So our next talk is about a transformative experience
they had at one of the great wonders of the world.
He's a ninth grader.
Anthony Bruce is a ninth grader, a trumpet player,
a sabre fencer who enjoys playing video games,
fishing and walking his dog.
Let's put our hands together for Anthony Bruce.
-If I ask you right now where you are you would respond with,
"The Ballard Public Library," obviously.
But if I asked you,
"Is this place pretty interesting?"
Then you'd respond with an opinion.
Now, one is a fact and one is opinion.
Which one matters more?
I'm sure you know by now that facts are facts,
they're always true.
But I'm also sure you've heard people tell you,
"It's your opinion that matters most."
How do you know if it's your opinion?
This might seem like a ridiculous
or even a paradoxical question.
After all, how can our own opinions not even belong to us?
An ordinary looking photo taken at the Great Wall of China
led an 8-year-old boy to this rabbit hole, and that was me.
Growing up half Chinese,
it almost felt like there were two mes.
There was the me that most people saw and knew,
and this me spoke English, but I also had a second side.
This me only spoke Chinese
and interacted with my Chinese family and friends.
It was not just a language that separated these two sides,
but it was also ideas, personalities and opinions,
things that make a person.
I've been to China a few times in my life to visit my family.
The first time I went was in 2017.
I remember feeling excited, nervous,
didn't know what to expect, and I had to pee.
I remember that year, American tourism was very common.
Written under most Chinese billboards and signage,
there was English translations.
It was this odd feeling that both halves of me
were alive at the same time. There was this one moment
I remember at the Great Wall of China
when we were taking pictures and this tourist came up to us.
She was Chinese and she wanted us to take a picture for her.
As we lined up our camera,
she stopped us because she wanted the picture to be
with somebody, but not just anybody.
She asked for the American girl, my sister.
The craziest part was she didn't even know us.
Yes, I was a little grouchy that nobody wanted my picture.
Yeah, and looking back, I can see why.
But even then, I wondered how taking a picture
with an American girl
was so important to a Chinese woman visiting
a Chinese monument.
I also visited China last summer.
Even though we hadn't gone in four years,
the experience couldn't have felt more different.
I remember when we arrived in the airport,
we were immediately separated for being non-citizens.
The process of getting through customs was an interrogation.
To further contrast the trip in 2017,
a lot of the translations
were gone from the billboards and signs,
and there wasn't a single American tourist the whole time
over the three weeks in the two cities we visited.
One of the most memorable moments from that trip
was when we were in a cafe
and my mom's friend from high school
brought up our appearances.
She said, "I can see some Chinese in your son,
but you can't tell there is any Chinese in your daughter."
I remember the heavy pause and the silence in the room
after that statement.
As an American, I can clearly see something changed in China,
but what changed in America?
First, you should look to yourselves.
What do you think about when China is brought up?
You might think about polluting the environment
or taking jobs or anything else. The list goes on and on.
But what opinion does it have you formed in China?
Only you can speak for yourself. But in 2022,
the Pew Research Center found that 82% of Americans
had a negative view on China,
while in 2017, this number was a mere 47%.
Naturally, this begs the question,
what could have caused these changes?
One explanation to this could be the COVID-19 pandemic,
which divided the globe.
That year that we were apart,
we were able to form opinions that weren't completely fair.
But there's still something that remained unanswered,
and that is, what are the causes of these opinions?
In 2021, the Pew Research Center asked adults Americans,
why they held a negative view in China.
Twenty percent talked about the human rights,
19% said something about the economy,
17% talked about the political system,
13% talked about the threats to the US,
and 12% talked about the US-China relationship.
If we look at all these views,
we see something in common with most of them.
Most of them have to do with governments or
government relations.
Adding our own government to the picture,
we can see that in 2017,
we actually had pretty good relationship with China.
We were affirming each other's policies
and showing mutual respect together.
Well, since then, there's been a trade war,
a pandemic, and alleged spy being shot down last year.
Now, the opinion between the people of our two countries
and the relationship between the governments
of our two countries has broken down at around the same time.
What could this mean?
Could our governments be manipulating our opinions
to match their agenda?
Is that what I saw in China,
and that what the studies and surveys have shown?
I don't know.
But in 2018, an effort by the former president of the US --
an effort was made by the former president of the US
using the CIA to spread negative information
to the Chinese people about their government
through their social media sources and news outlets.
If a government is willing to try
and manipulate the opinion of a nation overseas,
then how much more likely would it be
that they're trying to manipulate their own opinion?
Again, I don't know.
I just want to conclude by saying we can't know for sure
if our governments are trying to turn us against each other,
and we can't always know where some of our ideas and opinions
came from, and if they're even our own.
But we can question them.
As someone who has a connection to both countries,
I feel I'm allowed to be separated
from the opinions of both.
That separation allows me to see change,
and it allows me to ask how and why.
Because sometimes I feel like I'm two different people,
but sometimes I'm just one person
who isn't part of either side.
I want to share something that I learned based on what I saw.
We should step back
and we should ask about our ideas and opinions.
We should value logic and facts over emotions,
and we should question the common narrative.
Because your own logic is always more powerful
than that of the crowds because you know where it came from.
It came from you.
-Wow, that was -- it's encouraging as an educator
to just hear the critical thinking.
It's really important.
Media literacy is a big focus of mine,
and I think it's important
that our young folks take a moment to step back
and take a look at the information that's out there.
All right, our next speaker,
our next guest on the red dot is Grayson Niccolls.
She's an eighth grader.
She's the captain of her soccer team,
also part of her school's leadership crew.
In addition to that, she loves baking, reading, the ocean,
and of course her family.
Today she's going to share a deeply personal journey
through family changes.
Let's give a warm welcome to Grayson Niccolls.
-According to the Washington State Department of Health,
there were over 22,000 divorces in 2022.
That's about 49% of marriages.
In 2023, my parents got divorced.
Divorce is so common nowadays,
but still so new to those who experience it.
While eventually, hopefully, everyone gets to a better place,
there's not a lot
to look forward to in the short term of divorce.
My divorce bucket list was one; new room.
Two; double Christmas.
And three; parents who can cohabitate.
In the past eight months,
two of those things have been checked off the list.
Christmas was awesome. I got stuff for my new room.
In all honesty, though, divorce is hard, sometimes unexpectedly.
Take, for example, my dad moving out of my childhood home.
I knew he was going to.
I'd been told weeks in advance
and I knew that it was the next logical step in their divorce.
But knowing those facts and being okay
with those facts didn't change the weight
that I felt seeing his side of the bed empty.
Moral of the story, divorce will be difficult,
but it doesn't have to be as difficult.
One thing that is key is communication.
In divorce, most of the time the focus is on the parents,
but it is important to remember
that the kids are going through a divorce too.
Communication is key.
We've all heard the phrase to the point where it's cliche,
but it really is key when supporting your kids in divorce.
This starts with talking to your kids, asking them questions,
"How do you feel about this?
Are you okay with this?"
One of the reasons that divorce is so hard is
because you have this view of how your life looks,
your parents together, one house,
even if your parents fight all the time.
Suddenly, that all changes.
Now, it's two houses, two families,
two different dynamics,
almost two of a different versions of yourself.
Kids going through divorce go through all of that
without having control over anything.
That's why talking to them
is such an important part of supporting them
because it gives them back control over their life.
Also, remember
that communication is a two-way street.
You have to talk to your kids, tell them how you feel.
If what they say is hard for you to hear,
tell them and make a compromise,
rather than shutting them down or going behind their back.
This communication especially applies
when talking about dating.
No one really knows how to date after a divorce.
Some parents are ready right away, some need to take time.
But whatever is best for you might not be best for your kid.
That's why it's important to have a conversation
about dating with your kids
before there's a new partner to introduce.
And when the time comes to introduce a new partner,
remember that you chose them, not your kids.
You are asking your children to accept
and spend time with a new person that they may not resonate with.
That's not something you can force.
Divorce is not a two-sided process.
Everyone going through it is on their own side,
facing their own problems, and that can feel really lonely.
If everyone is trying to keep themselves up,
everyone will slowly come falling down.
That's why you need to be a teepee,
and communication helps you do that.
Talking through your problems
helps your family keep everyone up, including themselves.
Oh yeah,
this process has taught me a lot about the value of communication
and how much we need to use it in our daily lives.
Often when I'm articulate or thoughtful,
I'm told that I'm mature for my age, but why is that?
Kids are told to listen to adults,
shut down when they ask questions
because adults don't need reasons.
But asking questions
because something doesn't make sense to you is okay.
Standing up for yourself in a constructive way is okay.
Setting boundaries is okay. In our society,
the feelings of others
are sometimes valued even more than our own.
And in that, directness gets lost in the fray.
But our society cannot be afraid of constructive assertiveness.
I remember when I was younger,
my dad was struggling
because he had to have a hard conversation
with someone at work.
I made him a card that read,
"You can be respectful and assertive at the same time."
Those words are very true.
Our society needs to learn how to communicate better,
and that starts with teaching our kids.
Kids are the future, and the future needs to start now.
Thank you.
-Yes, communication.
I just had a conversation about communication yesterday.
It's so, so critical. Thank you for that.
Up next is Dorothy Bryan.
She's a 10th grader who loves softball
and is also an animal lover. When she's not at school
or working at the animal sanctuaries,
she's at home with her Jack Russell Terrier, Ripley.
She believes that animal ethics and
conservation go hand in hand.
Let's dive into an eye-opening perspective
on the food industry.
Let's give it up for Dorothy Bryan.
-This is a cow.
Yes, I know we should all be very,
very familiar with them by now. Except for one thing,
what is the average natural lifespan of a cow?
No one knows.
Such a common animal,
one that you've learned about since kindergarten
or one that maybe you eat every day,
and yet no one knows the average natural lifespan of a cow.
In fact, all we know is the average lifespan of a cow
before it gets executed,
which is about one and a half to two years.
Now, on the farms that produce the meat that you eat daily,
these animals are given drugs, antibiotics,
and chemicals to make them produce faster and better,
whether that be to sustain them in crazy living conditions,
to make them produce and give birth to baby
after baby after baby,
to make more and more milk or to grow so insanely large
that they can't even hold up their own weight.
Either way, these animals are being exploited
and mistreated for our benefit.
But you wouldn't have any idea of it
when browsing the aisles in the grocery store
seeing labels like all-natural, ethically raised or cage-free.
Now, when I was a little girl,
I always loved all of the animals
and it never ever occurred to me
that some of the animals I thought of
so dearly were being mistreated so horribly.
As I got older,
I learned more about the issues with the food industry,
but I never fully realized the extent of these issues
on the human population.
Now, humane washing is a term that refers to labels
that I mentioned earlier.
These labels plastered on meat, dairy,
and egg products aren't actually legally defined
by the US Department of Agriculture or the FDA.
Now, although they may look wholesome
when accompanied by a picture of a happy-looking pig
or a fuzzy cow,
the majority of them don't actually include any
animal welfare requirements whatsoever.
For example, all-natural means nothing.
It only includes post-slaughter treatment and,
therefore, has nothing
to do with how the farms treat the animals while they're alive.
Now, hormone-free only encompasses the use
or the absence of the use of hormones in dairy cows.
Free-range birds are given access to the outdoors,
but the time and the space permitted varies widely.
And finally, cage-free.
Did you know cage-free chickens only get one square foot
of living space each and those chickens
unlucky enough to not be cage-free,
are forced to live in battery cages
less than the size of an iPad?
Now, every month I make the trek from Seattle,
Washington, over to Whidbey Island
where I volunteer at a farm called
Ballydídean Farm Sanctuary.
I work with animals that come from abusive backgrounds
and once donated or rescued by Ballydídean,
they live stress-free, harvest-free lives.
And I get to experience the true personalities of these animals.
Did you know that goats are just like puppies,
and cows are basically giant cats trying
to get all up in whatever you're doing?
And there's this one hen on the farm.
She couldn't have a baby chick of her own,
so she adopted a baby chick.
Yes, some random other hen's chick,
and she's acting like it's her own child.
And yes, that's the chick right there in her wing.
It's incredible to see these human behaviors
and human emotions being exhibited in animals,
something you never would've seen
if they were being raised for slaughter on abusive farms.
These animals deserve so much more love and respect.
And the closest that we've gotten to that
is the term organic.
Obviously, all organic products tend to be better for you
and for the environment,
but they also include some animal welfare requirements.
Now, chickens underneath the organic label
are given two square feet of living space each
and have constant access to the outdoors,
even if it's just a small pen.
These are relatively huge improvements
on the other unregulated terms
that define differences between organic products
and humane wash products make buying organic a great way
to counteract the profits of abusive farms.
Another aspect that contributes to the mistreatment of animals
is the concept of speciesism.
Speciesism is the idea --
is the concept of justifying the exploitation of other species
with the superiority of humans.
So think about in our culture,
eating specific animals
or wearing the skins of some animals like dogs or cats
is a barbaric idea.
But on the other hand,
you wear the skin of a cow
almost every single day in your shoes.
And obviously if you eat meat,
then you support the consumption
and the slaughter of cows and chickens.
So it's ingrained in our brains
that some animals are here on planet earth for our benefit,
and the others are seen as companions.
Anti-speciesism is the idea
that an animal does not deserve to suffer for just being.
And this is incredibly summarized
by the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who says,
"The question is not can they reason, nor can they talk,
but can they suffer?"
This is all a very disturbing perspective
on such a common occurrence in our daily lives.
And I, like many of you,
I'm sure once had no idea whatsoever
of the harm being caused to animals in the food industry.
But through research I learned more about the issues at hand.
And I'm super excited to share this information with you today.
So a lot of you might be thinking,
"Okay, what do you want me to do about this?
I love hot dogs. I love pepperoni pizza.
I love burgers so much.
And honestly, none of this is really affecting me."
And actually, it is affecting you.
I mean, that's true, I love burgers,
but it is affecting you.
And I'll follow up with a common example of our harm
to the environment and our animals --
our harm to the environment and animals
coming back to bite us in the butt.
And that is where plastic someway makes its way
into the ocean, and over the years,
degrades into something called microplastic.
So tiny, tiny pieces of plastic,
which is then eaten by a fish.
This fish is then caught, killed, and eaten by you.
Except you're not only eating the fish,
you're also eating the plastic.
And this leads to serious long-term health problems.
There's a similar occurrence in the meat
that comes from abusive farms.
You might be thinking, "I'm just going to have a burger.
I'm just going to have a chicken wing."
But actually, you're also ingesting all of the steroids,
all of the drugs and all of the chemicals given to these animals
to keep them alive in abusive conditions,
and it's also more likely
that you'll contract a zoonotic pathogen or a foodborne disease.
So the next time you're in the grocery store
and you see the labels like, ethically raised,
or cage-free, turn around and head over to the organic section
because in the end,
it's better for you and your health
and it's better for the animals.
However, buying organic can be very inaccessible
for a lot of people.
And to change this,
we need to lobby our
government to force abusive farms to bear the full cost
of the harm that they're causing to our health,
the environment, and the animals.
This makes organic products so much more competitive.
The first step into solving these problems
about animal welfare is knowing about them.
And together we can build a more ethical
and sustainable food system by carrying this knowledge with us
and letting it guide our choices
throughout the grocery store and beyond.
Thank you so much.
-Wow.
Definitely going to reconsider my diet.
Our next speaker is a ninth grader.
She's an artist and a storyteller interested
in human rights issues.
They spend their free time learning about art
from cultures around the world.
They love bouldering and writing their next big D&D campaign.
The student is near and dear to my heart
and they bring a concept,
sharing that art can be powerful and a painful process.
Let's give it up for Bea Bunker.
-Picture this.
When you hear D&D, you probably think about a bunch
of kids sitting in a room screaming about fancy monsters.
You're pretty much right on the dot,
except it can be so, so much more than that.
This is Allie.
This is a D&D character
that I made for like a week-long thing last year.
And this character has taught me how to enjoy drawing again,
because I used to love it when I was little
and then I stopped for a long time.
And I've been drawing this character for over a year now,
and I've been developing this character for over a year now.
And throughout that time, I've found a couple of things.
Putting yourself into your art is a hard thing to do,
and it creates a tricky situation
where you have to confront even things
that you don't like about yourself.
And I do that with this character.
She is scared to disappoint people.
She runs away when she's worried that she's letting someone down,
and she lies when she thinks
that someone will be upset with her.
However, she also supports her friends with everything they do,
or she loves her family unconditionally
and she really likes books.
But something else that's happened,
I've found with this character,
is she's taking on a life of her own.
She has all this like stuff going on in this world
that she's a part of and she's not me.
However, that means that I can still confront this character
and see how this character reacts to things
and continue to put pieces of me in
and take some out because escapism,
for me personally, isn't healthy.
But what I've done is I have to look at it,
I can't run away from it.
And across this year, my art style has developed.
These two drawings were just a couple months apart.
And while the one on your right is an earlier one,
I personally like it less,
it has a different style than the one on your left.
The key thing there is that it's all up to personal choice
and what you like.
So when you go to write something or sing something,
who cares about what other people think?
It's all for you.
And this channels into art with many different aspects.
For drawing, it tends to be in line work or coloring.
For example,
this drawing has a much sketchier look with very,
very hard shadows.
And I personally don't really like it that much anymore,
but it's a really enjoyable thing to do,
and it helps me through a lot of challenges.
And when you take that and combine it with just the fact
that it's a creative outlet,
and creative outlets are great if you ask me.
But that really brings into the next section of mental health.
I experience the occasional mental health challenges
with many other teens in our country and across the world.
Specifically, for me, it channels in
through a thing called gender dysphoria.
And gender dysphoria,
if you don't know, is what happens
when a person's body tends to not align with their gender
or their sex characteristics.
And a thing that comes in with that for me is height.
And this creature, as you can see here, very tall.
And the next thing is height.
The average height for a girl my age is about 5 foot 4.
I am standing in just a little over 7 inches taller
than that on a good day.
But that was something that when I created that last drawing,
was particularly impactful for me.
And I've, through making that drawing, seen it,
confronted it and seen that's not me and I --
or more so, that's not all I am.
I'm so much more than that.
So here's the thing as well.
It doesn't have to be all doom and gloom.
You can make stuff for fun.
This character represents absolutely nothing about me,
and I just wanted to make a drawing for fun.
And it's sketchy, it's rough. I put stock images in
because I didn't feel like drawing anything else.
But what I have for you now is this:
next time you have to confront your feelings
or when you want to run away
or when something feels just too hard,
the last thing you need to do is, well, run away from it.
So write it, draw it, sing it, paint it.
Really do whatever it takes to get that out of your head
and into the world.
Thank you.
-Our next speaker brings wisdom from a grandparent.
Maya loves theater and debate.
When she's not in front of an audience,
she enjoys reading realistic fiction,
creating book reviews and science videos on YouTube.
Please welcome Maya Dehghan to the stage.
-I've been to many, many weddings,
but by far the most unusual thing
I've ever heard of happening at a wedding was the time
when a man showed up to a wedding in his work clothes,
which would be the current equivalent of you
showing up to your sister's wedding in a beach outfit.
He enjoyed the reception, was brought to a simple room
and was served a simple chicken broth soup for dinner.
Now, in Iran,
weddings are big multi-day parties,
and he arrived to the next night reception in a fancy tuxedo,
which he had had at home but hadn't had time
to change into the night before. That night,
while most of those same people were brought to the simple room,
he was brought to a much fancier room
with much better food like kabob and rice
and all the best fixings.
But the moment the man was served his food,
he grabbed a fist full of his shirt
and shoved it into his food saying,
"Clothes eat food, clothes eat rice."
Everyone was so confused,
and when they asked him what he was doing, he replied,
"This food isn't for me.
This food is for my clothes.
And my clothes are the reason I'm getting this food."
Which is why in Iran,
when you want someone to wear their fancy clothes, you say...
[ Speaking native language ]
...which means "rice-eating clothes."
While this may just seem like a simple,
silly Iranian folk tale
that my grandfather told me a few years ago,
it has a very real lesson.
One which Iranian poet Saadi explains quite well.
He said, "If people are people because of their eyes,
nose, mouth, and ears,
then why aren't pictures and paintings people?"
Saadi was a philosopher and like many other Iranian poets,
he disguised himself as a poet to hide his philosophical views,
which were highly illegal. Hi, everyone. I'm Maya.
I'm a quarter Vietnamese, a quarter Chinese,
and half-Iranian.
My mom is from Tuy Hòa, Vietnam,
but Chinese by heritage.
And my dad is from Tehran, Iran,
where my grandfather is from as well.
I have lived in West Seattle all my life.
During the pandemic,
I would Zoom call with my grandfather every other day
and we would talk for an hour or maybe even just half an hour.
And everything we said was in Farsi.
While for most people, the quarantine pulled them apart.
This quarantine brought me so much closer to my grandfather.
We started over the summer with children's books.
He would read the first sentence aloud to me,
and I would echo him,
trying and successfully failing to connect what
he was saying to the meaningless scribbles on the page.
When I finally graduated from the children's books,
he started teaching me poems by all the greatest Iranian poets
like Saadi, Hafez, and Ferdowsi.
One day, we finally got our own English copy
of the famous "Epic of Kings" and my grandfather started
explaining each scene to me page by page.
In the over two years that we continued these calls,
I formed a special connection with my grandfather,
an unbreakable bond.
And the picture of me here in gold is the first time
I had ever gone to see my grandfather.
He had always come to us to visit us,
but this time me and my dad came to him.
He lives somewhere in the middle of nowhere,
somewhere in Saskatchewan, Canada,
two hours away from the nearest hospital.
But I remember every moment of that trip;
how nice everyone in the town was,
how nice he was to everyone in the town.
According to the 2020 census, over 2 million --
over half a million Iranians live in the US,
and we're not alone. As of February, 2024,
there are 51.4 million first-generation
immigrants in the US.
We live in a world and a country rich in diverse cultures,
history and values.
The world has so much to offer to us.
And by learning just a little bit more about the world,
we can learn so much more about ourselves.
It can connect us to fascinating people
and build great communities.
You might not have an Iranian grandpa,
but everyone has an interesting person they can talk to,
which is why I want you to do three things over the next week.
I want you to do, one,
set up a call with someone you appreciate in your life.
For me, that was my grandpa, but for you,
that could be a sibling or your favorite barista.
Two, I want you to find a piece of writing,
like a poem or a folktale,
and see what it makes you realize about yourself.
And three, I want you to try
and connect with someone from an older generation
and see what you might learn about
how thrilling it can be to connect with someone
who already has the wisdom that you need.
In the past year,
I did a presentation for my communications class,
and we learned about our core values.
My core value was communication, and all of these three things
that I just told you to do involve communication.
By setting up a call with someone you appreciate,
it teaches you how amazing it is to appreciate someone
and to be appreciated in return.
By finding a piece of writing,
you connect with someone who you may have never even met
but you can still relate to.
And by connecting with someone from an older generation,
you communicate with the past
and see what you can relate to in the history
and all the histories.
It's not hard to talk or to be curious,
but we often overlook the power
that talking with others has
even when it can teach us about ourselves.
In Iran, we have this thing called taarof,
which is a formality, something we say to respect each other.
For example,
you wouldn't invite someone to your house
this Friday night by saying,
"Would you like to come to our house this Friday night?"
Which seems polite enough.
You would say, "We would love to have your honorable presence.
Bring honor to our humble home this Friday night."
Yeah, intense and I'm so grateful to you,
my audience,
my honorable
and distinguished audience for your precious time and attention
listening to my humble presentation.
-I'm Kristin Leong.
I am Seatown's other co-founder and teacher,
and I am thrilled to be introducing our first speaker
for our second half.
Daniel Le is an 11th grader.
He's an international baccalaureate student.
He's also part of the Running Start program
at North Seattle College. His talk is entitled
"What I Learned from Forcing My Friends to Support Me."
Please give it up for Daniel Le.
-Imagine this.
You're about to speak in front of a huge crowd of people;
you're nervous, palms sweaty, knees shaking.
That was me, about 30 seconds ago.
Now, that may also be you and you might be thinking, "No way.
This guy is lying. He's a natural."
But it's true.
You see, I discovered the path to becoming not only
a TED Talk speaker,
but a better person overall was not a solitary one,
it was a path paged with the bricks of community,
collaboration, and courageous participation.
And the only reason I can stand in front of you all today
is because of the wonderful support system I have;
and some are actually here today.
Hi, you all.
A common misconception most of us have
is that there are two types of people,
the natural born people and those who aren't;
that for the people who aren't,
it's possible to get better at whatever discipline it is,
but impossible to reach the level
of those natural born people.
Well, not only do I want to say that's wrong,
it's completely wrong.
And if you don't believe me,
let's go back to my first public speaking opportunity
on June 20, 2023 at 10:37 AM.
Yes, that is me.
I was stood behind that black curtain
just a few feet away from
where I'd be talking to my entire school.
I remember it so clearly;
how nervous I was peering out into the crowd
that was shrouded in darkness
and how brightly the stage was illuminated with
just that single podium sat there.
And it was at that podium
where I delivered my speech, and my speech was bad.
This speech that I spent months working on
was filled with me forgetting some of my lines,
repeating words and stuttering like crazy.
I mean, I was always told that starting was the hardest part
and that once I started,
everything would just go right
and my confidence would only grow.
For me, it was the opposite.
It felt with every sentence my confidence was diminishing.
With every sentence, my throat felt just a little bit drier.
And with every sentence, my voice just a little bit fainter.
After what felt like an eternity,
I finally finished my speech.
And as I was about to hurry off stage, to my surprise,
the entire crowd erupted into cheers and applause
echoed throughout the entire auditorium.
And it was in that moment
when I was filled with so much pride and gratitude for myself,
for accomplishing something not only
that I've never done before,
but something that I've always been anxious about.
Now, yes, that all may seem a bit cliche
and it is my own memory,
so maybe I distort it in some way
to make myself believe more people liked it
than they actually did.
Here's the thing though,
I don't know how many people actually liked it
and I never will.
But what I do know is that I got my friends to cheer extra,
extra loud for me.
And when you see a group of people
so passionately cheering on someone
that might make you want to cheer them
on just a little bit more,
and that might make the person sitting next to you
cheer them on just a little bit more.
And the effect just compounds over and over again.
So it was only after everything that I realized the difference
wasn't just in my own determination,
but in the determination of those
who I surrounded myself with;
my friends who believed in me and supported me from the start.
From peer pressuring me to do it in the first place,
to helping me write my speech, helping me practice it,
to voting for me
and cheering me on in election that I actually won.
Thank you. Thank you.
Now, a fact I usually like to admit from that
is that I was the only one running,
but the point still stands.
The point still stands.
Looking back on that and looking back on my old self
that was so nervous and trembling and
about a puke in front of his entire school,
to the person so confidently about
to puke in front of all of you,
I'm filled with so much pride and gratitude;
not just for myself, but for those who supported me.
And it's for all those reasons that I find it
so concerning that widely popularized idea
concerning masculinity is the fact
that you have to tune out your emotions,
isolate yourself from loved ones and work until you break,
AKA, the villain arc where you do all those things.
And heck, I've even tried it myself and I saw some results;
but frankly, it's unhealthy and unsustainable.
Especially to the younger audience it's being pushed onto.
I mean, when we're pushing a message like that,
it's no wonder that a whopping 37% of young boys and men
are experiencing mental health difficulties.
And of that 37%, half are unable or unwilling to ask for help.
That is nearly one in every five young boys and men.
And I get it, asking for help is hard.
It could be embarrassing,
and at times you could feel unworthy
of asking for that help.
But it's in those times of embarrassment and vulnerability
that you'll learn about the true power of community.
I don't know if you have that community
and maybe you think you don't have that community,
but it's never too late to start building one.
You could talk to somebody at school or work,
talk to somebody at the bus, or heck,
even the person sitting there right next to you right now,
it doesn't matter.
It's never too late to start building a community
and surrounding yourself with the individuals who support you,
believe in you,
and will catch you when you fall because falling is inevitable,
but those who fall and get back up
are so much stronger than those who never fell at all.
To all of you seeing me here today,
if you were to take one thing from this talk,
it should be to take an active role
and surround yourself with individuals who believe in you.
Be your own active support system
until you can find a support system to help you.
Find the people who believe in you, support in you,
and that you trust in asking for help.
So I ask that you all join me as we go down this unknown,
confusing, yet amazing path we call life, together.
-Our next speaker, Victoria Bai,
is a sixth grader, one of our two sixth graders,
that's part of Seatown's Story Collective.
She is a lead student ambassador at her school
where she is also a competitor on the debate team.
Her talk is entitled,
"How to Identify the Toxic People in Your Life."
Please welcome Victoria Bai.
-This is what some people in my school call me, insensitive.
At school sometimes when I hang out with my friends,
I get criticized for some things I'm used to.
I sometimes try to argue back,
but they manage to twist my words around.
There are a lot of people like these in the world.
Some I call them toxic; some might just not recognize them.
Are these people worth being friends with?
I'm not here to complain about my life as much as I want to.
I'm here to talk to you
about how maybe toxic people can change.
Through my own journey,
I have learned that anybody have the ability to grow
and be someone they want. I will start by sharing to you
six type of toxic people I learned about.
The first one is the energy drainer.
They're exhausting to work with, drains positivity and optimism,
and can be very distracting.
Next, is the fake complimenter.
They say things and think bad things about you,
but on the outside they might say really nice things
and fool you around. Next is the pessimist.
They only see bad side of it; bad side of everything.
They can ruin emotions and sometimes they refuse to change.
Next is the criticizer. Similar to the pessimist,
they also say unsupportive things
and they can purposely do things even if they recognize it.
Next is the victim.
They act innocent and guess --
and everything they do is for attention.
Lastly are the manipulators.
You probably see them around all the time,
however, they're very hard to recognize.
And they're really good at twisting situations,
and good at making obvious threats,
but you just can't do anything about them.
I wanted to make this speech at first
to help the people around me
recognize the toxic people in their life.
I wish by making this speech I can help people
that has once faced things that I have also been through.
However, as time passed,
as I did more research about toxic people,
I learned that perhaps I can fit into one of the top categories.
It was hard, the self-realization,
but it also helped me to become a better person myself.
However, what led me to this person?
What led me to being a toxic friend?
Well, I guess it all started in sixth grade.
At the beginning of sixth grade,
I had a friend called -- let's just call her, Jenny.
I was really, really close to her.
Every day I would spend time with her,
I would hang out with her every day,
and I just ignored basically everyone around me.
And even though, although there were some flaws about her,
such as criticizing her own art just to get attention,
I decided that this is her and she's my friend
and I cannot betray her. However, as time passed,
I sort of just got tired of those behaviors
and started talking to someone else.
Let's just call her, Sophia.
She told me that she disliked Jenny a lot as well.
And while since knowing that she also disliked her, I was like,
"Okay, there's a friend I can talk to."
However, there was this one day,
something that I have never imagined happen.
I was called to the middle school director's office
because, apparently,
I was sending threat messages to Jenny.
I didn't know what's going on.
I just thought,
"Okay, someone might be coming up with things about me."
However, I learned that Sophia had betrayed me
after I stepped out of that office.
She told me that she had resended our messages to Jenny.
She told me that she actually did not dislike her as much
and that she chose to send those messages
because she said that what I was saying, she disliked.
Now, from that day on, I changed.
That was what led me to become a toxic person.
For me, that betrayal meant so much to me.
I decided that I cannot let myself be vulnerable
around the people around me, again.
I needed to be stronger.
However, the way I became stronger
was not the way I intended.
Going back to my original goal of making this speech,
I have something to add to it.
It's self-awareness.
As I researched about the things I'm going to talk about,
I learned, I became self-aware about the things
around the things I have been acting.
Like me, when you first start doing that,
it might feel really bad.
However, later on, you might realize it's good,
it's a good change.
And even if you're not ready for it,
you will be as you learn more.
I want to end with something I thought about
while doing the research and it's this;
don't expect others to change for you.
Learn how to be a good person for yourself.
Thank you.
-Kamakshi Shirodkar is an eighth grader.
She is the founder of the Desi Affinity Group at her school
where she is also a leader in the student government.
Her talk is entitled,
"How to be Whitewashed Just Enough".
Please welcome to the stage Kamu Shirodkar.
-Growing up Indian in a community
of White people is no easy feat. When you have White friends,
go to White schools and are surrounded by White people,
it's hard to represent your culture.
I'm different from my peers in so many ways,
my name being the biggest difference.
My full name is Kamakshi Shirodkar,
but so many people had trouble pronouncing it,
I had to shorten it into Kamu.
I've gotten so many different responses.,
from one swim coach saying Commu as in communism,
to a basketball coach, totally giving up and renaming me,
Kay, without asking.
Another way I'm different is my appearance.
Yes, my hair and skin are dark, but when I was in kindergarten,
a certain girl really liked to point that out for me.
She used to call me a bear
because my arms and legs are very hairy.
Another girl said that the lines on my hands
looked like they were colored in with marker.
Speaking of my -- oh, man. Speaking of my appearance,
apparently according to teachers,
I look like every other Indian girl in my school.
The amount of times I've been confused for another Indian girl
that I don't even slightly resemble
by my own teachers is insane.
Because of all this, I really wanted to fit in.
I was tired of sticking out against my White peers.
I never really talked about my Indian culture,
and I just tried my best to make myself as much
like everyone else as possible.
But I realized something throughout my
middle school years,
and that is, I don't want to change myself.
I love my -- oh my God. Sorry.
-This is very sensitive for one.
Let's see.
-I love my Indian culture and it's not my problem
if other people can't understand it.
I'm so grateful to be part of this rich culture
that spans thousands of years.
I'm so grateful to be part of this rich culture
that spans thousands of years.
Yes, I'm still not the most Indian girl out there.
I don't speak Hindi or Marathi, I rarely wear Indian clothes
and I don't go to the temple that often.
But I can understand a bit of both languages from my parents,
I love shopping for Indian clothes with my mom,
and I have a small Indian altar that I can pray to every day.
So although it is hard to be part of the 1% in the USA,
I wouldn't trade it for anything else.
The problem with this is,
even though now I'm fully secure in myself
and not at all confused,
society tries to fit people like me into boxes.
Either I can be whitewashed
and fully assimilate with everyone else,
or I should be offended with every interaction with someone
who doesn't know how to pronounce my name
or confuse me with someone else.
It's like I'm walking this tightrope between two worlds
and sometimes it gets exhausting to constantly stay balanced.
It's this all-or-nothing mentality
that our society has that gets people so confused.
There's a common term to describe people like me,
ABCD, American Born Confused Desi.
It was created by generations past
because of the strict culture that they see parents had,
like bringing Indian food to school
or walking around with oil in your hair.
These things that some White people may frown
upon can cause Indian kids to want to assimilate,
and that is what causes the confusion.
Luckily, my parents never did that to me,
so I was free to explore my culture
and figure out myself without being forced to do anything.
I used to get really frustrated
when people couldn't pronounce my name,
but since then I've realized that it's not just a me problem,
this is a whole immigrant problem.
Recently, my mom showed me an interview of Saoirse Ronan,
and where she shows us how to pronounce her name.
It's spelled S-A-O-I-R-S-E,
but it's pronounced Ser-sha.
The interview is actually really funny
and it made me realize that I can choose not to get mad
when people say things like that to me.
For example,
if I went to a country
where I didn't speak their native language,
wouldn't I struggle to pronounce their names?
So how can I blame everyone for not being able to say mine?
I believe the other reason I'm so secure is
because of all the representation
that we have today.
A few years ago, there were no Indians anywhere; not in books,
TV shows, magazines or anything.
Today, look how far we've come.
Our own Vice President, Kamala Harris, is half Indian,
one of the hit TV shows on Netflix,
"Never Have I Ever" is starring an Indian woman.
Me, I'm up here today giving us talk
that will be posted on YouTube for the world to see.
Unfortunately, according to a Nielsen study in 2021,
South Asian women such as myself
only occupy 0.3% of screen time in the media.
However, that is 0.3% more than what we've had in recent years.
Today is not an ideal world by any means,
but I'm hoping that me and my generation
can fix that so no little Indian girl will ever be confused
about her identity like me.
-Our next speaker, Finn Leong.
He is a 10th grader.
He is a 2023 Echo Externalism fellow,
and he is currently part
of the Museum of Pop Cultures Youth Advisory Board.
Finn's talk is entitled "Life Lessons I Learned
While Riding the Bus".
Please welcome Finn Leong.
-It was sixth grade and it was the first time
I was asked to ride the bus on my own.
All I had to do was get home.
My house was not far but I had zero guidance from my parents,
which I was used to.
Well, I ended up going the wrong way
and I ended up all the way to University of Washington,
which is the opposite of my house.
So I was really lost. We got some sixth graders here,
but I was not very smart in sixth grade,
so I was just really confused.
I was asking strangers what to do, you know,
I just wanted to see my mom.
I started to cry, you know.
So fast forward to today, I take the bus 12 times a week,
at least 12 times a week,
from quick commutes to school to adventures
that span all across like the state,
like with lots of transfers.
I'm pretty much the last person to ask for a car ride.
It took me four years to develop the skills I have now,
and I've learned three essential life lessons from that.
One; time management, and patience, and problem solving.
The Metro is not consistent.
You have to calculate if the bus is going to be early, late,
and like how fast you can walk there.
These years trained me.
My problem-solving skills also have improved.
A lot of people don't take the bus
because they're afraid of its inconsistencies.
It's easy to see the appeal of just being able to hop
inside your car, but I've learned
that it's easy to get used to these inconsistencies
and adapt to them.
The times don't even fluctuate as much as you might think.
I can plan ahead on the bus apps
and walk even at certain speeds to reach the bus on time
and enjoy the walk around me.
Taught me to be patient, resilient and level-headed.
The second thing I've learned from riding the bus
is that strangers are not so scary.
I used to be really afraid of strangers
especially some of them special strangers in Seattle.
And I probably still would be
if it wasn't for what I've learned from the bus.
I've learned a lot about who I am too.
I've learned to embrace the diversity
that the bus has to offer because the Metro is
like a connection point for the whole city.
People from all walks of life take the bus
and it taught me to fit in in a way
that I've never fit in before.
It acts as like a break from life
where you can just sit down and see all these different people
you've never seen before.
The third thing I've learned is independence.
I said before that I'm the last guy to ask for a car ride.
The bus is the first taste of freedom for a lot of youth,
especially in Seattle.
On September 1st, 2022, minors --
a law was passed that lets minors ride the bus for free,
thanks to Move Ahead Washington,
which is funded by the Climate Commitment Act.
I think the rest of the nation
should follow in Washington's steps.
The bus seems mundane and small,
but lessons that the bus can teach
can't be learned anywhere else.
Like being level-headed, outgoing,
and capable are some things I've learned from the bus
that I don't know where I would learn somewhere else.
I'm just sharing my love for riding the bus,
but you can help too.
So if you're in Washington --
we got some people from Washington --
I'd say support Move Ahead Washington;
it's easy to show your support.
You can vote so you know what to do.
If you're under 18 and can't vote,
simply use that free bus pass you have all the time
and they track that. They track that thing.
If you're not in Washington,
maybe you're just visiting,
talk to a local representative in your state
and tell them that the youth deserve the life lessons
that the bus has to offer. It's very important
that I think the whole country should have this initiative
that Move Ahead Washington started.
So with all that said,
next time you open Google Maps maybe click
on the bus route option, even if it takes a little longer.
-Our next speaker, Jinie Chon.
Now, I also want to share a little good news
with all of you guys today
and I asked Jinie if this was okay
for me to share with everybody. But Jinie Chon is a 17-year-old,
second-year law student at the University of Washington.
Let's give it up for Jinie.
So really exciting news that I'd love to share
and just celebrate Jinie for a second,
is that she just got accepted to Stanford and
she's going to be transferring to Stanford in the fall.
So let's give it up for Jinie.
Hold on.
In addition to being a second-year law student
at the University of Washington,
Jinie is also the Family Court Reports 2023 to 2024
Reporting Fellow.
She's also an intern
with the Washington State Human Rights Commission
and a councilmember on UDub's
College of Arts and Sciences Dean Advisory Board.
Her talk is entitled "Lemons, Cockroaches and Rain;
Three Important Lessons from Rejection".
Please give it up for Jinie Chon.
-"Hey, Jinie, I'm sorry to inform you,
we won't be accepting your application."
"Hey, Jinie, after careful consideration,
we regret to inform you we won't be offering you the position."
"Hey, Jinie, we already found someone else."
You know, a lot of people say hard work leads to results.
Hard work should lead to success.
You know, if that was the case,
I would like to ask you what happened to all
of these rejections? In the past several weeks,
I spent a lot of time preparing resumes,
preparing personal statements, you know,
preparing mock interviews, like looking myself in the mirror
and saying, you know, like, "Hey, tell me about yourself."
"Oh yeah, I'm Jinie," and, you know,
spewing out all of this stuff.
But I ended up with 17 rejections,
three no responses, and a zero percent success rate.
And so what can I do now?
You know, if the interviewer asks,
"Hey, could you tell me about yourself?"
I might as well say, "Hey, I'm Jinie.
I'm a college student,
and I got rejected from every other position.
So, you know, can you accept me to this one?"
Is all I could say.
Yeah, but also my mom raised no quitter.
She's the type of mom
to drop you off 30 minutes early to the school,
even though it's like a snow day and it's like the Arctic Snow.
Yeah. She was also part of the 2016 Olympic Archery team.
So if that kind of gives you a perspective of
how much resilience runs in the blood, yeah.
So I decided to apply to a bunch of other positions
and right now I'm going to cover three.
The first one I applied to was a legal internship.
You know, something that seemed like a wild distant dream.
I didn't think I would get it, exactly why I applied.
The second one I applied to was a political consulting firm.
You know what kind of company doesn't want an intern
who's been rejected by every other company?
Yeah.
And then the third one I applied to
was an international nonprofit. The last time I checked,
there's the word rejection in every single language,
so I might as well get rejected from every corner of the globe.
You know, and as I stared at the white screen in front of me,
I made a sigh of relief
and I submitted all three applications even
though I didn't have any acceptances before.
Several weeks passed
and my inbox remained very scarily silent.
I mean, what was I expecting?
I got rejected 17 times, three no responses.
And what gave me the confidence to apply
to the other three positions.
And just as I was about to slam my laptop shut,
I got my first email which read,
"Congratulations. We'd like to offer you a position."
And this was from the legal internship.
You know, something that I felt like was a wild distant dream.
The second one,
"After careful consideration,
we'd like to bring you on board."
It was from the political consulting firm
and I guess they really liked my 17 rejections.
Yeah. And the last one was from the international nonprofit.
This is a translated copy,
but maybe they just didn't have the word rejected
in their language.
Maybe that's why they said that they were impressed.
And so with these three acceptances,
I felt a better sense of confidence.
But even after these three emails,
I also received another one.
I received an email from one of the three no responses
I talked about earlier. They said, "I'm sorry."
But it wasn't that kind of sorry where they say,
"I'm sorry, we don't want you in our position."
It was actually a genuine apology.
They said,
"You know, we are kind of behind on reviewing applications
and we still want to give you a chance."
And so I took on the interview,
I made it to my first research position,
and a couple years later,
right now, I just presented on my first symposium
on a research paper I've been working on for two years.
-Wonderful. -Thank you.
And the three positions
I applied to provided a great foundation
for several other positions later on.
So why am I telling you this story?
Well, I wanted to share three life lessons.
The first one being lemons.
You know, you've probably heard;
when life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade.
I don't think so. I really don't like lemonade.
Not only that, but why make lemonade
when you can just squeeze them into your eyes,
you know, brand new perspective.
You know, take those lemons and squeeze them.
You know, not medical advice,
but I still think it provides a brand-new perspective
that you can't get anywhere else.
Second one; cockroaches. Did you know;
cockroaches can live several days or even weeks
without a head or a limb or multiple limbs.
Now, I'm not saying you look for opportunities
to cut off your limbs or head, yeah, not medical advice here,
but I am saying we should embrace rejections
like we embrace -- like cockroaches embrace survival.
Last lesson; even when it's raining
and even when the ground is muddy, I would say show the rain
that you still have a couple moves to bust out.
Even when it's raining rejection letters,
I would say take your chances and go out there.
So why am I telling you these three lessons?
I'm not guaranteeing
that these three lessons are going to bring you
17 no rejections, three no responses, and four acceptances.
And I also can't guarantee
that it'll bring you any acceptances at all.
In fact, you might end up after following all these,
you might still be at zero acceptances.
But what I am saying is that following these three lessons
can make any rejection more meaningful,
make any success even more sweet.
And so whether you're squeezing lemons into your eyes
or like trying to cut off a limb or two,
I'm going to say every rejection is a testament to your strength,
every rejection is a testament to your resilience.
Again, thank you so much.
I'm Jinie Chon and I appreciate the chance to talk to you.
-Our speaker today is Haley Foster.
She is an eighth grader.
She's an award-winning equestrian.
And in fact, just last weekend she was a champion
at a horse show in Canada.
She's also a core member of her school's leadership team
and she's an aspiring veterinarian.
Her talk today is entitled
"Divorce from the Daughter's Perspective".
Please welcome Haley Foster.
-I'm a nationally ranked equestrian, soccer player,
golfer, skier, and I'm on my school student leadership team.
I'm also a sister, a daughter, a granddaughter, and a friend.
I'm an overachiever.
However, twice a week my soccer cleats are not
where they're supposed to be; three times a week,
it takes a whole car to get my things from house to house.
At the end of the week,
you would think I'm exhausted from all
of the sports and extracurriculars,
but it's actually
that I know the next week will be another week of,
"I don't know where my backpack is."
My parents got a divorce when I was six years old.
Since then,
I've had to grow up and deal with the challenges
that come with living in two households at once.
My two houses are very different.
When I'm with my dad;
I'm with my stepbrothers, my stepmom and my dog.
When I'm with my mom,
it's us and the animals; Chihuahuas, cats and chickens.
Kids get put in the middle of their parents a lot.
I know that there have been times
where I felt isolated as a kid and alone.
When your parents have challenges,
it's hard sometimes to not feel
like you have to play the peacekeeper role.
I know that I have learned a lot from my experiences
as a child of divorce,
but I've realized that the only way
to do everything is to find balance.
Balance to me means feeling
like I don't have to pick one piece of my life over another.
I can be a focused athlete but have fun with my friends too.
I'm not perfect at this and I probably never will be,
but I realize that I don't want to be one of those kids
that all they do is school, all they do is sports,
all they do is socialize and ignore their parents.
So I try and be aware and find time for everything.
I think that's why I'm able to do all
of the commitments that I have.
Having to balance sports and friends
like most teenagers is hard enough.
But when you have to add on finding time
to spend with your parents and your family
that you only get to see half the time,
things get more challenging.
Feelings of letting everyone down can arise.
When I think about what it means to me to let everyone down,
or what would even happen if I let myself down,
it's more of an internal fear than external.
"I fear that if I don't push myself
to nearly the breaking point, I won't reach my full potential."
That's my biggest fear.
This is common in children of divorce.
When I first started writing this talk,
I thought I was writing a talk about
how kids with divorced parents
are forced into developing great executive functioning skills.
Through the research and writing process,
I've learned more about the mental toll
that divorce can have on everyone involved and affected,
whether you know it or not.
I was not aware that I have a certain level of anxiety
coming from my home situation until crafting this talk.
I'm not one to dwell on the fact that divorce is hard;
everyone knows that.
I'm a believer
that you need to make the absolute best of every situation
that is put in front of you.
Almost half the kids in the United States of America
are children of divorce. That's the real reason
why I decided to get involved with crafting this talk.
People often tell me that I'm super mature for my age,
but I credit this to having to go through my parents
splitting up when I was six,
blending families,
and having to worry about where my favorite stuffed animal was.
Kids that you see that look poised on the outside
might be the biggest mess on the inside and you don't even know.
My point is, I don't see my parents' divorce as a weakness.
I see all the things that I've learned from it
as my greatest strength.
Statistically, either 50% of the people in this room are
either divorced or part of a family where there is divorce.
I'm sick of people telling me that they feel sorry for me
because my parents divorced when I was so young.
There are millions of kids just like me across the globe.
And here are two things that you can do for kids like me
that have nothing to do with pity.
Do not assume that you should feel sorry for kids
that have divorced parents.
This has been a challenge for me
and will continue to affect me for the rest of my life,
but it has also given me the power to become
the person that I am today.
And lastly, I want you to take away from this
that under all of my accomplishments, organization,
maturity, and constant need to overachieve,
I'm still a kid and I too still struggle.
Behind the poised person on the outside,
there might be someone on the inside
that still needs your help.
Thank you.
-Thank you all for coming today.
Thank you all. Great job today, everyone.
-Thank you. Awesome job.