biology teacher if he’s out here today
mr. charm for giving me this lab coat so
I look kind of more sciency than I’m
actually so let’s put this on and I
shall get started
and as an introduction my name is Connie
Chang Chen I’m a junior here at Valencia
high school and I’m gonna try to
convince some of you guys out here not
all of you guys because I’m not a
debater but some of you guys that maybe
people should be more like bacteria and
the thing with bacteria is that a lot of
people they don’t have a good concept of
bacteria at least maybe a lot of the you
guys are thinking everybody’s talking
about big things out here where why were
you talking about bacteria and you’re
right there’s probably a million other
big concepts philosophy or whatnot that
my friends have been talking about that
I’m not covering afterall bacteria are
two micron size beings that we can’t
even see sometimes with a microscope we
still can’t see them now maybe we have
to talk about the concept perhaps that
size does not define the potential for
anybody or anything to do something and
the best example of this is that we
often underestimate what we see on first
glance and maybe reverse in time for me
it was at least one year ago when I took
AP European history or two years ago
five years ago 10 years ago maybe 20
years ago for some people out here that
there’s some destructive things out here
bacteria is one of those things and I’m
not going to show an actual picture of
people being affected by Yersinia pestis
which is the disease that causes the
black death but in the 13th century
one-third of the European population
died of the black death and imagine if
that happened today one-third of the
world’s population dying off we that
would be a cataclysm and also to
reference in my love for biology and I
also love urban dictionary because of
the great definitions they give on here
but I used to carry a kampol biology
textbook around when I was studying bio
and it’s a pretty one of the things that
you learn from bio is that bacteria is a
large source of life because let’s think
about it the stuff that goes through
your stomach is digested by bacteria
and there’s actually scientists who
believe that bacteria were perhaps
introduced from outer space by a meteor
that provided bacteria on to the life we
know today now for my next picture I
actually want the audience to perhaps
take adjust what this is and if
anybody’s thinking it’s a cupcake that’s
pretty decorated with orange specks or
whatnot it’s not it it’s actually the
point of a needle which gives the point
to show that needles are not very
pointing sometimes and that the orange
specks are actually back to your and I
didn’t do exact count of how many back
to your there are but perhaps there are
a few hundreds of bacteria now a point
of a needle being having that many
bacterial cells on it it’s kind of scary
imagine your hands are much larger than
the point of a needle you probably have
millions or even trillions of number of
cells and that’s probably why your
parents tell you to wash your hands it’s
scary if you don’t wash your hands
eating like that you can get sick it’s
not good and maybe we should delve more
into the fanatical side of not even
science but just learning stuff one of
the things I loved in middle school was
Greek mythology I look I’ve literally
read through the entire Percy Jackson
series probably five times or so and
this is a bust
of Dionysus who is the god of wine in
Greek mythology now in Greek mythology
there is actually Dionysus was
worshipped as one of the twelve
Olympians and interestingly a lot of the
people don’t really think about it they
just think wine is for parties and for
adults and whatnot but actually wine
wasn’t as we know scientifically now
wine isn’t actually produced by gods
it’s really produced kind of an acute
manner bacteria just eating beans and is
producing stuff and it’s very funny if
you think about it
Greeks and Romans worship wine gods as
the creators of wine but maybe all these
centuries we’ve really been worshipping
bacteria and we just didn’t you didn’t
even know it and to make this more
personal to myself I actually worked at
an antibiotic-resistant lab over at Cal
State Fullerton which is just down the
street from here and
as a sleep-deprived high schooler it’s
not always good to be doing back to your
running experiments where you’re trying
to prevent as little contamination but
try discover mud as much as you can
about the world as you can and as I said
I’m a sleep-deprived high schooler and
when I’m working on a lot let’s say
October of last year 2017 I walked in a
lab it was cold as chilly I was really
tired of the four tests that day and I
just really wanted to go make a petri
dish a petri dish is what you use to
grow your bacteria that you can later
test on and one of the things with petri
dishes is that when you’re preparing it
you do not want any contamination
literally contamination is the worst
thing you can do for anything that you
want to test and so I’m like okay I’m
just gonna mix my chemicals and then
heat that up and then hopefully nothing
goes wrong the next day when I check on
this and something like this hikers and
this is not what you want on an empty
petri dish the zig zags look cool but
that’s just bacteria that you don’t want
on there and when you’re talking about
experiments that involved bacteria maybe
some of them take just one day they grow
but everything leading up to that point
is so important that experiments take up
pushed up from two weeks maybe even
mumps I’m not gonna say years because I
haven’t had that happen to me yet but
it’s just not good and perhaps this is a
lesson that sleep-deprived middle high
schoolers shouldn’t be doing science
sometimes but I’m not here necessarily
to tell a story about my fanatical
adventures of science but really to tell
a lesson here I said at the beginning
that we often underestimate things we
see at first sight and it’s important to
think about this because this is equally
applicable to you and I for under
estimating a lot of us can apply this in
that we often underestimate how
something goes wrong and that it’s not
always fair for us that we view
ourselves as not as superior or not as
good as everybody else in the crowd and
actually under estimating is one of the
things in our society has developed
especially in my generation competition
is considered such a large theme you’re
competing with people for jobs competing
for college spots and just
and finding a purpose in life and it’s
just simply as applicable that we
underestimate not only people around us
but also people that we know ourselves
and it’s scary to think that sometimes
we can’t even consider it ourselves as
people who aren’t logistical II able to
do something but I’m talking about
bacteria and really it’s under
estimating and also how we also have the
potential to do something in this
picture we have people actually lined up
in the form of bacteria and my reference
here is to say this people are already
kind of like bacteria we are competing
with millions of other people to get a
spot in society but the other
perspective that we don’t always think
about is that like bacteria we also have
so much potential to do anything that we
want to do it’s just
unrecognized so let me give me let me
give you guys an example of this let’s
say on my right hand here I have a
bacterial cell that will be the cause
for all future cures of any disease that
we will find but perhaps on my left hand
here there is equally a good chance that
a bacterial cell that hasn’t been
discovered that hasn’t found its full
potential will become the cause of all
disease the death of humanity and the
end of the world as we know it
equally as possible is that anybody
listening out there could be the
scientists fi insecure for cancer in the
future that becomes a Nobel Prize
winning author that everybody wants to
meet and get signatures from yeah on the
other hand there’s another person out
there who hasn’t been realized that they
perhaps will be the one to press the
button that will nuke the entire world
and leave us in the Cataclysm but the
thing is is that none of this will
happen if none of us realize our
potential the issue of potential is that
it needs to be recognized and we need to
see it in ourselves before we can do
anything about it the point being is as
is this if bacteria a hundred forty
thousand times smaller than the average
human being can be the source of so many
things on life life death cure
diseases then aren’t humans just as
equally probable in creating change in
society in ourselves we have the
potential so the only thing is to
recognize that potential and become a game changer be like bacteria thank you