Chicago Youth Talks

This past Saturday I went to the Chicago Youth Talks that was held at the Alliance Francaise de Chicago. It was the second Chicago Youth Talks. When I made arrangements to go to the event, I wasn't exactly sure what to expect. Someone who had gone to the first one told me it was kind of like a Ted Talks but with students from around Chicago/ the Chicagoland area. The description of the event was pretty accurate but also slightly off. 

Taking public transportation made the commute from my house to the event long which made me a little late. Upon arrival to the location, I had to hop the fence and ask someone who was inside to open the door for me and a couple other people who had also hopped the fence and gathered outside of the location. I entered into a small dark auditorium-like setting. The seats were mostly full, the audience was a good mixture between adults and youth (there seemed to be a bit more high-school aged students than adults). 

The speaker was a girl maybe around 16 who was speaking about visiting Egypt and refugees in Jordan. She connected her experience as an american visiting a country she had never been to to her experience as someone who's ancestors had fled the country. It was interesting how she connected two parts of her and spoke about how the experience helped expand her understanding of the world and herself. As she spoke, I was also able to connect her topic to what I've been doing in my International Relations class where I've been learning about policy in the Middle East now and through time. 

There was also another speaker who really moved me. His speech wasn't particularly long or fancy with complicated words or anything, but it was full of soul and honest emotion. He spoke about speech impediments. It was amazing how he was able to open up to a room of 40 something strangers about something he was self-conscious about, about something that made him feel vulnerable. His name was George and he has struggled with stuttering during his childhood. I appreciated how he didn't make it all about him but about respect. He told us children who stutter are more at risk for bullying and while many are able to get rid of their stutter and improve their speaking, there are many who don't and that continue to stutter through adolescence and adulthood and that those are the ones that deserve to be respected and not spoken down to.

The two girls that presented after him spoke on the idea of perfection which I thought was very relevant to my life as a senior going off to college and to how I analyze my academic experience thus far. "Perfectionism is self-abuse of the highest order," read an image on their slide-show presentation. They spoke about the increasing levels of competition among students and how that affects the way in which children see themselves. They spoke about how learning now is not just about learning but instead, it is about learning the best because failure is failure and good enough is failure and success is not good enough but the impossible standard of better than is the only thing acceptable. This connected really well to what I've been discussing with my peers in my Race, Class, Gender, and Sexual Orientation course where we realize how much these sort of things perpetuate our culture and can hinder the performance of groups of people. The two girls connected it to the theory of civilization and the hypothesis that civilizations that begin near a river have a bigger chance of succeeding than one that begins in a deserted area to children going to schools in "good neighborhoods" and how this affects Chicago, a city that is blatantly segregated by race and class.

I really enjoyed going to this event. I liked how loosely the topics where chosen. I felt like I was learning so much and gaining new perspective through the presentation of their perspectives. They made it look easy to go in front of a crowd and let loose your bare thoughts, to expose yourself to strangers.