“Millennials are not lazy,” said senior mass communication major Drew Heinz, who attended this year’s TEDxUNCAsheville, themed The Kids Are Not Alright.
For Heinz, these talks showed the motivation of millennials and encouraged others “to help inspire people, to show our values and morals, what we hope to bring to the table as we go along through life.”
UNC Asheville students brought back TEDx talks to campus on March 26 and sold out with 100 guests. These talks were presented not only to inspire others to pursue their dreams but to also disprove those millennial stereotypes.
“My favorite part of this whole experience is having a whole bunch of Asheville locals and people from out of town as well,” Heinz said. “I’ve heard people as far as Texas come here to this event just to see our speakers and to see what we’re all about.”
One of the many inspirational speakers of TEDx was physics professor Michael Ruiz who presented “Fantasy, Intention and Invention,” which encouraged others to persevere and to pursue their dreams.
“Hopefully it’s an inspiration that anybody can pick what they want to be or do by imagining it being perfect,” Ruiz said, “then working away the details day to day to work out the specific things that help bring that fantasy to reality.”
“The talk by Dr. Michael Ruiz I found really interesting; I had him as a professor so it was really neat to see him outside of the classroom,” said Bailey Ethridge, an applied mathematics and anthropology major. “He was talking about achieving a dream over a long course of time, and just the amount of time it takes and really focusing in on one thing.”
Rachel Simpson, a fermentation scientist at Burial Brewing Company was also a TEDxUNCAsheville speaker. Her TEDx talk focused on her fascination with yeast. She said she is inspired by this microorganism because of what it can accomplish and produce in even the toughest environments.
“Be like the yeast cell in fermentation,” Simpson said. “Take in your environment and adapt to it, make something productive and process things in away that is constructive and inspiring.”
This was the first TEDx event for Razel Foster, a senior psychology major, who said the talks were refreshing because it was nice to know there are other people who are going through similar experiences.
“It gave a really good perspective on how to deal with life and to also keep in mind other people’s experiences too,” Foster said.
“I think it’s interesting, the wide variety of topics and people,” Ethridge said. “We’ve got students who are my age coming from similar backgrounds, you’ve got professors, you’ve got people from the community. So I think it’s really important for people to come together to see how similar everyone really is, and even talking about experiences people that haven’t had.”
To learn more about TEDx and to see the talks, please visit the TEDxUNCAsheville playlist on TEDxTalks YouTube channel.
(Story written by Amber Abunassar ’16.)