Autodidact: A Self Taught Person | Rishi Parikh | TEDxEnloeHighSchool
[Applause] now I'm standing here on stage today with a paint bucket next to me is holding a stuffed penguin now you might be wondering what is she doing it's kind of random right well no I'm not here to talk about the projectiles of throwing stuffed animals into paint buckets as interesting as that sounds I'm here to talk about a societal issue that I believe is pertinent for us as a community to recognize so I'm asking everyone here to do me a favor think about one role that you'd like to achieve within the next five years is it getting at your dream college or is it finally starting that business that I've dreamt about her ears now I want you to imagine that achieving that goal is as easy as throwing this something went into the bucket now for most of you it seems pretty easy right I mean if everyone in this room if each and everyone stood where I'm standing right now we could say that everyone would probably make a shot and achieve their goal but what if all of the students in the room had to stand fifteen feet farther because of their age and what if all the girls has achieved a shot standing backwards because of their gender or what if every single person in this room that was not born in the audience was not hot to take a shot at all it seems unfair right unfortunately this is the harsh reality of the relationship between the opportunity and achievement so everyone goes through unique struggles and difficulties and it can be anything a multitude of factors including your gender your race your socioeconomic status as well as your age your appearance your sexual orientation now there are so many factors that can affect how you achieve success anyone in this room could be a victim of limited opportunity regardless of your race religion your gender or your age so basically to sum this up an example I would say is in a book published by Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam in this book one example that really stood out was an illustration of Holly social-economic how these socio-economic status can affect people's opportunity for example if we took two children one that was born in a wealthy family with educated parents and then another child that was born in a family with lower socioeconomic status almost every study shows that this that the child born in the well care family is more likely to succeed so why is this now the main reason is opportunity it's for example he welfare child has better access to formal education and they also have better family connections among other factors so I'm not here to say that people with limited opportunity aren't able to achieve in fact let's take a look at this company recognizes well Henry was just a poor farmer a poor farm boy that grew up with limited education however he recognized and overcame the opportunity gap gap through educating himself at which led him to become one of the greatest innovators at this time or have you ever heard of radium and polonium well this was discovered by Marie Marie Curie who broke during their time with woman in science he was not recognized however she overcame this opportunity gap and became one of the greatest chemists of her time Clark how about our own senator J tawdry who is the first Indian American to be voted onto the North Carolina hhor-- or bruised baird ginsburg he's first the second woman to be appointed to the US Supreme Court and of course Barack Obama the first african-american president to serve our nation so what do all mean what do all these individuals have in common well all these individuals were able to recognize we overcome the opportunity gap that they could achieve much more the people that type and grew up with one privileged opportunity so I believe it is important for us to recognize the disparities that exist within our community and there's a lot that we can do today I encourage everyone to think about to be more conscientious of the thoughts and judgments that can make about other people and if you reckon there's opportunity disparities within our community there are multitude of things that you can do for example you can volunteer with children that have committed opportunity or donate to the food bank or even call the local politicians office to talk about the situation right now us as students we wield a lot more power than we think and if there's one opportunity that we should seize right now it's education I think that change starts small through our thoughts and actions but together we can make a positive and widespread change in our community and rubber everyone she is more than what was the I thank you