The secret is out: Southlake is homebrto some of our nation's future leaders. This year's TED talk event,brTEDxYouth@Carroll, proved exactly that, as 14 Carroll Senior Dragons convergedbrto share a wide range of stories and insights with their fellow students andbrthe community.
TED is nonprofit group that startedbrhosting speaker conferences in 1984 to promote “ideas worth spreading.” Carroll'sbrTEDx journey began four years ago, when a student launched the inauguralbrTEDxYouth event. Ever since then, dozens of students have auditioned each yearbrfor the right to speak about the subject matter of their choice. This year'sbrtopics ranged from alien life to stress reduction, and in her second year as abrspeaker, Paakhi Srivastava honed in on emotional intelligence.
We chatted with the driven andbrinnovative Paakhi to learn more about her talk and her time at Carroll, and itbrquickly became clear that she has plenty of ideas worth spreading throughoutbrSouthlake and beyond.
Southlake Style: So what are somebrof your favorite subjects in school? What activities are you involved in?
Srivastava: I love math and science,brand that's always where I've excelled. I'm on the debate team, and I've been presidentbrof the Emotional Intelligence Club since my sophomore year.
SS: Tell us more about that.
Srivastava: We're a group that meetsbronce a week to discuss emotional intelligence, what it means and how it can bebrapplied in different situations in everyday life. I come up with activitiesbrbased on the different situations we discuss, and we work together to understandbremotional intelligence and how we can use it in our everyday lives. Thosebractivities were how I came up with the idea for my TEDx talk this year.
SS: You were also a speaker at lastbryear’s event. How did that happen, and how was your talk different this year?
Srivastava: The organizer was on thebrdebate team as the speech captain, and he told me I should apply to speak! Mybrtalk last year was mostly about the idea of emotional intelligence—what it is,brexamples of it in our society, etc. This year, I talked about “The Not GoodbrEnough Mentality,” which was actually the title of my speech. It was aboutbrovercoming the idea that we're not good enough, which I think is reallybrimportant for students.
SS: What do you hope the students andbrother attendees learned from your presentation?
Srivastava: I want people to becomebrmore aware of their emotions. There's a lot of pressure to be the best, so I'mbrpromoting how to manage that stress at the high school, and hopefully extendbrthat into middle school. I hope the parents at the speech took away how to help their students manage manage and deal with stress.
SS: What did you learn from this process and from the other talks?
Srivastava: This year we had muchbrmore of a variety of speeches. We had more applicants, and the subjects rangedbrfrom net neutrality to a shooting in Dallas. And because I hosted this yearbrinstead of participating, I had to do all of the advertising and administrativebrwork, and that experience helped me realize I want to go down that path in mybrfuture career. It was a challenge, but seeing it pay off was so worth it. Ibrenjoyed every speech, because they all showed how much talent the Dragons have.br
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