so far in the ten years I’ve gone to
school I’ve learned what I call content
it’s a standardized curriculum such as
math science history and English if I
take the amount of hours I go to school
each day multiply that by five days a
week that by 36 weeks times the amount
of years I’ve gone to school it comes
out to be about twelve thousand six
hundred hours and Counting in the
building attempting to fill my in from
my brain with information such as the
mitochondria is the powerhouse of cell
and George Washington was the first
president of the United States of
America though this can be important
information to me it’s not what I
necessarily found interesting though I
found it all to be informative I wasn’t
getting enough out of it so I decided to
do something about it I rethought what
my education could be I wanted something
more than just going to school every day
and despite the obstacles I faced with
school I made my own education it was an
education built for me by me I didn’t
have any standardized test and it was
set out of pace that I wanted and based
on my interest and I didn’t really have
anyone to share my knowledge with it was
just me so my favorite type of learning
is a doing learning which means I love
science experiments this love landed me
in some serious heat literally last year
I spent three weeks a is pursuing an on
standardized education of pyrotechnics I
watched videos online how to make
fireworks fuses and the big one Rockets
using the help of the internet I found
materials around my house that could
substitute for what I needed and with
some PVC pipe some homemade fuses and
what is the worst thing that could
possibly happen
I made some amazing Rockets the first
one
worked beautifully it went at least four
feet high the second one amazing it went
at least six feet I’m now the third well
where as the first to touch the skies
the third one it blew at my face well it
blew up half my face
thankfully my face was turned just one
way so it only hit half my face
sadly half my face was deeply fried by a
do-it-yourself rocket my hair look like
cobweb that smelled horribly of burnt
hair and I know that the first thing I
thought after the explosion was do I
still have my eyebrows thankfully I did
but of course my nose got the worst part
of the deal it goes without saying I
learned a lot such as why you wear
safety equipment yeah and the big one
don’t play with things that explode
so other than fire
I enjoy biology and even though my
actual biology class has been giving me
a run for my money this entire year I
learned I love learning about plants and
animals and I like doing this by being
outside but I realize of course I can’t
understand concepts such as ATP cellular
respiration and the electron transport
chain might just being outside but
that’s because it’s complex textbook
knowledge and this can be sufficient but
again I’m a doer so now if we take a
trip in my learning time machine we find
me in fifth grade where I developed the
passion of herpetology which is the
study of both reptiles and amphibians
but specifically I love snakes my first
pet snake I caught one day on a walk and
throughout the years I had the chance to
catch many others here’s a picture of me
holding a rattlesnake on my 14th
birthday
and here are two baby water snakes
caught at just the local Botanical
Gardens what
these experiences I was able to have
hands-on learning so one of the biggest
concepts I have to grasp and you have to
grasp in order to make your own
education is utilizing trial and error
and learning from your mistakes
in school error is suppressed because
when you fail you get a bad grade but in
your own education error is almost the
entirety of learning and with trial and
error and the help of some friends I’ve
made many amazing things one of the
greatest accomplishments of my pre
teenager life is a bee swing which is
basically as it sounds it’s a swing the
only catch is that you have to jump off
a platform that’s about 20 feet high and
the swing itself is to cable cables
tethered between two trees so firstly to
make the V swing we had to make the
frame then after and by hosting two
large pieces of wood up to a tree and
bolting them then we laid down a
platform eventually got around to
painting it and voila it was done but to
be honest it wasn’t as easy as I made it
sound we messed up so many times and we
continually argued about what was the
best thing to do
it took us five days just to put up the
initial two boards because we kept
having to experiment with how to hoist
up these large pieces of wood to this
tree and we had to buy more wood because
we would cut boards too short and at the
very end of the experience the the
platform itself had a very drastic tilt
to it but the great part about this
experience was that there was never a
single time or I felt discouraged
sometimes when you continually mess up
you seem to almost beat yourself up
about you can even convince yourself
that you’re not good enough but making
mistakes is alright and I know you’ve
heard this so it shouldn’t be anything
new but you learn from your mistakes and
when you do you get something cool like
I promise those students were harmed in
the making of that film so now I want to
talk to you about how you can make your
own education building an education
extends far beyond just building and
catching things one of the biggest
things a person can do to strengthen
their knowledge is read but can’t
reading just be too hard or you’d rather
be doing something else I get it I feel
the same way all the time which is why
it’s so important to find a book that
enthralls you if you aren’t a heavy
reader right now pick up a book of your
choice and read just progressively each
more day and if you are have you read
are now challenge yourself work outside
your typical genre another way to help
read more is finding a reading
environment what I mean by this is find
a place where you feel most comfortable
reading for me it’s outside for others
it could be the library or the couch and
through my very very unprofessional
experience here I realize that picking
up a book of your choice and actively
reading it is far more beneficial than
reading a book given to you by school or
by work but reading doesn’t only have to
come from books technology allows you to
research virtually any topic you can
think of the first thing I do before
starting any project is go to Google and
just to give you an example when I
looked up the word space I got three
billion two hundred and ninety million
results in point six nine seconds there
is an actual world of information out
there you just have to be willing to
look for it so I’m betting here not
willing to bet but betting that the
majority of you in this room have been
super interested in a topic one time or
the other but how many of you has spent
serious time on that topic
that’s because weighing the work you
want to do with the work you don’t want
to do can be difficult
typically the work you don’t want to do
is work you have to do and the work you
want to do has been categorized by this
word hobby but in the word want
there’s desire and where there’s desire
there’s a determination you should be
determined to make your own education
and that determination will be able to
power you through any work you have to
do for example I’m a ninth grade
so my workload is killer but even though
this is work I generally don’t want to
do
I’m incentivized determined to get
through it in order to do what I want to
do but having a heavy workload does not
only extend to people my age life it’s
busy and there are always things to do
which is why it’s so important to you
know maybe work on a project or simply
do research on your phone whilst sitting
in line to get food and once you start
doing this it’ll become a habit once you
it becomes a habit you’ll start working
on new and exciting things and that’s
when the fun begins if you’re determined
to get make your own education you’ll
always be able to thankfully a school
taught education gives you a break but
time it stops for no one so taking
advantage of that time is the most
important thing you can do 8 2 3 3 d 8
this is an idea an idea which represents
the duality of learning but don’t let
the two separate periods of time confuse
you you cannot just have one or the
other they are dependent on each other
they complement each other knowledge you
learn in school can be used in your own
education let them build off each other
by being constantly eager to learn new
things Mark Twain Mark Twain once said
don’t let schooling interfere with your
education if you want to learn something
in school and they don’t teach it
don’t take no as an answer go out and
learn it get an app on your phone watch
documentaries on save Netflix or YouTube
use Wikipedia an education doesn’t just
have to be math science history in
English an education is what you make it
don’t just take what is given to you
take advantage of your skills and your
time maybe read 30 minutes a day work on
fun projects that interest you and
please please try not to blow anything
up thank you
[Applause] [Music]
school I’ve learned what I call content
it’s a standardized curriculum such as
math science history and English if I
take the amount of hours I go to school
each day multiply that by five days a
week that by 36 weeks times the amount
of years I’ve gone to school it comes
out to be about twelve thousand six
hundred hours and Counting in the
building attempting to fill my in from
my brain with information such as the
mitochondria is the powerhouse of cell
and George Washington was the first
president of the United States of
America though this can be important
information to me it’s not what I
necessarily found interesting though I
found it all to be informative I wasn’t
getting enough out of it so I decided to
do something about it I rethought what
my education could be I wanted something
more than just going to school every day
and despite the obstacles I faced with
school I made my own education it was an
education built for me by me I didn’t
have any standardized test and it was
set out of pace that I wanted and based
on my interest and I didn’t really have
anyone to share my knowledge with it was
just me so my favorite type of learning
is a doing learning which means I love
science experiments this love landed me
in some serious heat literally last year
I spent three weeks a is pursuing an on
standardized education of pyrotechnics I
watched videos online how to make
fireworks fuses and the big one Rockets
using the help of the internet I found
materials around my house that could
substitute for what I needed and with
some PVC pipe some homemade fuses and
what is the worst thing that could
possibly happen
I made some amazing Rockets the first
one
worked beautifully it went at least four
feet high the second one amazing it went
at least six feet I’m now the third well
where as the first to touch the skies
the third one it blew at my face well it
blew up half my face
thankfully my face was turned just one
way so it only hit half my face
sadly half my face was deeply fried by a
do-it-yourself rocket my hair look like
cobweb that smelled horribly of burnt
hair and I know that the first thing I
thought after the explosion was do I
still have my eyebrows thankfully I did
but of course my nose got the worst part
of the deal it goes without saying I
learned a lot such as why you wear
safety equipment yeah and the big one
don’t play with things that explode
so other than fire
I enjoy biology and even though my
actual biology class has been giving me
a run for my money this entire year I
learned I love learning about plants and
animals and I like doing this by being
outside but I realize of course I can’t
understand concepts such as ATP cellular
respiration and the electron transport
chain might just being outside but
that’s because it’s complex textbook
knowledge and this can be sufficient but
again I’m a doer so now if we take a
trip in my learning time machine we find
me in fifth grade where I developed the
passion of herpetology which is the
study of both reptiles and amphibians
but specifically I love snakes my first
pet snake I caught one day on a walk and
throughout the years I had the chance to
catch many others here’s a picture of me
holding a rattlesnake on my 14th
birthday
and here are two baby water snakes
caught at just the local Botanical
Gardens what
these experiences I was able to have
hands-on learning so one of the biggest
concepts I have to grasp and you have to
grasp in order to make your own
education is utilizing trial and error
and learning from your mistakes
in school error is suppressed because
when you fail you get a bad grade but in
your own education error is almost the
entirety of learning and with trial and
error and the help of some friends I’ve
made many amazing things one of the
greatest accomplishments of my pre
teenager life is a bee swing which is
basically as it sounds it’s a swing the
only catch is that you have to jump off
a platform that’s about 20 feet high and
the swing itself is to cable cables
tethered between two trees so firstly to
make the V swing we had to make the
frame then after and by hosting two
large pieces of wood up to a tree and
bolting them then we laid down a
platform eventually got around to
painting it and voila it was done but to
be honest it wasn’t as easy as I made it
sound we messed up so many times and we
continually argued about what was the
best thing to do
it took us five days just to put up the
initial two boards because we kept
having to experiment with how to hoist
up these large pieces of wood to this
tree and we had to buy more wood because
we would cut boards too short and at the
very end of the experience the the
platform itself had a very drastic tilt
to it but the great part about this
experience was that there was never a
single time or I felt discouraged
sometimes when you continually mess up
you seem to almost beat yourself up
about you can even convince yourself
that you’re not good enough but making
mistakes is alright and I know you’ve
heard this so it shouldn’t be anything
new but you learn from your mistakes and
when you do you get something cool like
I promise those students were harmed in
the making of that film so now I want to
talk to you about how you can make your
own education building an education
extends far beyond just building and
catching things one of the biggest
things a person can do to strengthen
their knowledge is read but can’t
reading just be too hard or you’d rather
be doing something else I get it I feel
the same way all the time which is why
it’s so important to find a book that
enthralls you if you aren’t a heavy
reader right now pick up a book of your
choice and read just progressively each
more day and if you are have you read
are now challenge yourself work outside
your typical genre another way to help
read more is finding a reading
environment what I mean by this is find
a place where you feel most comfortable
reading for me it’s outside for others
it could be the library or the couch and
through my very very unprofessional
experience here I realize that picking
up a book of your choice and actively
reading it is far more beneficial than
reading a book given to you by school or
by work but reading doesn’t only have to
come from books technology allows you to
research virtually any topic you can
think of the first thing I do before
starting any project is go to Google and
just to give you an example when I
looked up the word space I got three
billion two hundred and ninety million
results in point six nine seconds there
is an actual world of information out
there you just have to be willing to
look for it so I’m betting here not
willing to bet but betting that the
majority of you in this room have been
super interested in a topic one time or
the other but how many of you has spent
serious time on that topic
that’s because weighing the work you
want to do with the work you don’t want
to do can be difficult
typically the work you don’t want to do
is work you have to do and the work you
want to do has been categorized by this
word hobby but in the word want
there’s desire and where there’s desire
there’s a determination you should be
determined to make your own education
and that determination will be able to
power you through any work you have to
do for example I’m a ninth grade
so my workload is killer but even though
this is work I generally don’t want to
do
I’m incentivized determined to get
through it in order to do what I want to
do but having a heavy workload does not
only extend to people my age life it’s
busy and there are always things to do
which is why it’s so important to you
know maybe work on a project or simply
do research on your phone whilst sitting
in line to get food and once you start
doing this it’ll become a habit once you
it becomes a habit you’ll start working
on new and exciting things and that’s
when the fun begins if you’re determined
to get make your own education you’ll
always be able to thankfully a school
taught education gives you a break but
time it stops for no one so taking
advantage of that time is the most
important thing you can do 8 2 3 3 d 8
this is an idea an idea which represents
the duality of learning but don’t let
the two separate periods of time confuse
you you cannot just have one or the
other they are dependent on each other
they complement each other knowledge you
learn in school can be used in your own
education let them build off each other
by being constantly eager to learn new
things Mark Twain Mark Twain once said
don’t let schooling interfere with your
education if you want to learn something
in school and they don’t teach it
don’t take no as an answer go out and
learn it get an app on your phone watch
documentaries on save Netflix or YouTube
use Wikipedia an education doesn’t just
have to be math science history in
English an education is what you make it
don’t just take what is given to you
take advantage of your skills and your
time maybe read 30 minutes a day work on
fun projects that interest you and
please please try not to blow anything
up thank you
[Applause] [Music]
Please follow and like us: