Friday, January 25, 2008

Going Back To My Old High School To Give A Speech

This past Wednesday I did something I never really though I would end up doing at any point in my life. I was asked to be a guest speaker at my old high school Roosevelt High. I gave a speech,lecture what have you to the news paper class of the school. Ironically something I failed to mention during my five minutes of fame is that when i initially enrolled at Roosevelt, I was going to take the news paper class, but ended up taking a t.v. production class in which I wrote, directed and edited a movie about a student getting chased around the school by a security guard. I attended the class with my girlfriend and friend who are also huge people in the schools news paper. How important ? They're my bosses. Any who i was honored and excited to go speak to the class because someone out there thinks I know enough of something to talk to others about it and give them some advice. In retrospect it works out perfectly with my ambitions to help out my community and helping them achieve greatness while giving something back. For the better part I mostly talked about and explained my experience with our colleges news paper, trials and errors we have and basically trying to explain that a high school news paper isn't that much different from a college one. There are differences but that's because of the level at which paper is at. After that I talked about this blog and my experience with it. Meeting people and writing stories for the blog and La Taco www.lataco.com I tried to be as simple and engaging as I could with them, course knowing they were high school students I didn't get my hopes too high. After all I know what it's like to be their age, why it only seems like yesterday I was in their shoes. Talking to their teacher I came to find out that there are students in the paper serious about taking journalism as a career and if I helped those students in any way, well then I will have done my job. To think that me going to my old high school and giving a lecture to students about what I want to do as a career. I never would have thought of it. But like I wrote, even if I make an impression on one single person or steer them in the right way, I will have done my job. During my speech I also of course talked about me not being an immigrant. At this point it's becoming second nature to talk about it with other's. Still I had tons of fun going to see them and I would love to go see them again. Food for thought I added their blog page on my links along with other friends in case you wanna check'em out. They all have potential, just as I did at their age. They just need someone to help them filter it into something great or at the least show them the way.