school and my family and I went to the
Cayman Islands for a spring break
vacation trip and on the first day
well I’m had the whole thing planned out
for us we went paddleboarding we went to
stingray stage where we got to swim with
stingrays and feed them a bunch of squid
is a lot of fun and after a long day of
lots of activities especially after the
first day and soaking up all that Sun we
went out to dinner and we came back and
in once I got back to the hotel lobby
there’s the NCAA finals basketball game
on and I got really excited for it so I
went out and I sat down on the couch and
I was texting my girlfriend and I
actually took this picture and you oh I
can’t really see it but it says a 944
p.m. and in our time here it was 844 and
this was nine minutes before the
accident and but I’ll just pick it from
my story here so I came back and I
started to get this really itchy feeling
that you get when you get sunburned if
you know what I’m talking about
and so I went over to my mom who’s to
know in a different couch I was like hey
ma I go across the street and get some
aloe and some water and she was like
yeah sure you want me to come with you
and I was like I’m 16 I can handle it
don’t worry about it so what happened
was I cross the street
I bought the water and I was 18 inches
away from making it back to the curb
where my Marriott hotel was at when I
was hit by a car and you can see that
right right here so what happened was I
was like I said 18 inches away which was
one more step away from being onto the
curb when the driver swerved to miss
jogger by swerving to miss him he
swerved directly into me and when he did
that the left back side of my skull
smashed against the windshield which
where you can see started the web
shattering of the car and after that I
was I went underneath the car and 64
feet after the point of impact OHS
the street just laying there completely
conscious during the whole entire thing
and after that I got put on life support
which I got pwned life support and
pressure and my cranium got so risky and
got so close to killing me that they had
to remove a large amount of my the right
side of my skull which saved my life and
so yeah after all that happened see you
oh sorry go back okay so the next that
been following two months after my
accident where do I point this okay
so following two months after my
accident I endured lots of physical
therapy and that was not a challenge at
all it was actually fun for me to
relearn how to move every single muscle
on the left side of my body due to the
impact that I took on my skull as you
can see my primary motor function was
very damaged saying with the prefrontal
cortex and that’s basically I was
supposed to wake up out of my coma and
not know my family not know who I was
not having my personality but I defied
all of those odds and I’m able to speak
in front of all of you today which is a
blessing from God and basically I’ve
learned a lot of things having to go
through this journey in my life and of
all the things that I’ve learned the one
thing stuck out to me and that is I
didn’t understand why everyone saw what
happened to me as being so tragic and so
depressing because everyone thought I
was depressed and I it was so hard to
communicate to other people that I was
myself when I was happy and I was
blessed that I could talk and form
sentences like no one could really
understand that and for me that made me
discover that I have control over the
way that I react to things emotionally
of everything in this universe that we
as humans have no control over the one
thing that we do is our emotional
response to things that happen to us and
once I figured that out that that my
life turned around completely everything
I could only find the good out of every
bad traumatic thing that you know the
news would report and say like it was
just crazy and an example I’d like to
give is my junior year of high school
going in to my junior year of high
school I had absolutely no idea what I
was going into because I was signed up
for an AP u.s. class a bunch of honors
classes and all the administrators told
me you can’t take those and I was like
wait pull me out when I fail but until
that comes keep me in the classes and I
will prove to you that I can stay in and
I’ll tell you that my junior year of
high school I got the best grades that
I’ve ever gotten because I worked so
hard at proving everybody wrong because
I have control over how I view things I
was positive about everything going into
that year and if there’s anything that
you guys should get out of what I have
to say and my story and how I survived
and beat all of the odds and I’m so
blessed to be here to talk to all of you
is that you guys have control over only
one thing in this entire universe and
that’s yourself and your conscious and
the way that you view things and with
that you need to use that to your
advantage and every time that you get
bad news don’t be so negative about it
you have you need to see the positive of
everything that happens to you and don’t
take anything you have for granted
because I’m going to walk again it’s all
about reteaching myself how to do
everything I had to reteach how three
teach myself how to be social or you
teach myself how to learn and it’s all
about patience and for you guys I really
hope that you guys take this advantage
of having a troll over your emotional
response the things that happen to you
and and make your life a happier more
positive life it’s as simple as that it
doesn’t take getting hit by a car
to realize something so simple and I
mean yes let’s see what else do I have
as I did actually oh so like I was
saying I see the pause and everything
like think about it I get to graduate
again I get to graduate from the NCV I
agree I’m gonna graduate high school
despite all odds of me never being able
to learn again I’m just so happy to be
here thank you all for listening to me
and I hope that you guys got everything
you wanted to out of this thank you
[Applause]
[Music] [Applause]
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