The fourth annual TEDxAustinCollege happened Sat., Sept. 28. Six people “shifted perceptions” including AC’s very own: senior Seth Howard. These six people were nominated to deliver a speech about something they were passionate about and believed it was an idea worth sharing.
Seth Howard is a senior completing majors in Business Finance and Economics. He is also the vice president of Student Assembly. He spoke about the 2008 Financial Crisis and who all was to blame. Howard believed this topic was relevant to a college student audience because he wanted to teach us about what happened to prevent such a disaster from happening again.
“It happened about ten to eleven years ago,” Howard mentioned. “Being able to explain that on a level that I hope everyone can understand and not all of the nitty-gritty facts can help inform loaners if something like this to happen again then maybe they can be more aware and notice, ‘hey, something isn’t right.”
If given the opportunity, Seth would have liked to go more in-depth and explain everything in more detail.
Howard stated, “I love to have spent 30 to 40 minutes on the topic. There were definitely more things I wanted to add.” Unfortunately for him, he only had half of that time. Because of, “time and complexity, I couldn’t unravel that all in 15 minutes, but I think if I had the time, I would have been a lot harder to memorize but I think it would have been well worth it.”
TEDxAustinCollege 2019 was his first time talking to an audience about such a sensitive topic. While at Austin College, he has presented his research to others. This helped him wit have a little bit of experience with public speaking. He was thankful for all of the people who helped him, especially with editing, and made the process much easier
Howard had been working hard on his presentation since January. All of this summer and fall, he was editing, practicing, and figuring out how to talk on stage. “It was a very fun, but grueling process.” He felt a moment of relief when he got off stage but was honored to have an amazing opportunity.
Five other speakers spoke that day. Aaron Flores graduated from Austin College in 2009. He presented the importance of personally communicating with neighbors and not through smartphones. He also noted how Hurricane Harvey united so many people by helping everyone around them. His goal was to urge people to not wait for a disaster to come together.
Minni Malhotra gave a talk about the medical crisis. Especially in the US, doctors have a very shallow relationship with their patients. In a matter of 15 minutes, a doctor can diagnose you and prescribe a bunch of different pills. As Malhotra said, the medical system is “reactive, not proactive.”
Kusha Mohammadi also graduated from Austin College in 2015. He talked about medical clickbait and how we can avoid it but asking the right questions. The studies articles use as evidence to back their claim can be misleading.
Julia Shahid spoke about the importance of a good teacher. The power, a teacher who cares about their students has is unbelievable. Not only is having a great teacher vital to education, but she also explains how detrimental having poor teachers is.
In 2002, Lindsay Williambrown graduated from Austin College as well. Her talk was about her experiences of “working from home” while being homeless. She, like everyone else, would never think she would be homeless, especially coming from such a high paying job. She nows uses the lessons she has learned on the streets to talk to others so others can try to prevent this from happening to them.
TEDxAustinCollege was made possible by so many volunteers, planning teams and faculty. This event takes a whole year of planning and this year was a success. Stay tuned for TEDxAustinCollege 2020.
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