TEDx

By: Ellie Ana Sperantsas, Andrew Yuan

The 2021 TEDxPhillipsExeterAcademy Organizational Team hosted the Academy’s third annual TEDx event at the Bowld Recital Studio on April 18 following the theme, “The Search.”

The event was 100 minutes long and featured nine speakers—upper Emma Chen, lower Matilda Damon, upper Siona Jain, lower Kodi Suzuki Lopez, senior Nahla Owens, prep Achyuta Rajaram, upper Dellara Sheibani, prep Aavik Wadivkar and upper Nathan Zhou—who gave speeches about a range of topics, from parental drug addiction to homomorphic encryption.

Upper and 2019 speaker Maxine Park took on the responsibility for organizing TEDxPhillipsExeterAcademy following the graduation of former Executive Director Elizabeth Kostina last fall. Park invited upper and 2019 speaker Hansi Zhu to work alongside her as the Event Manager to organize the event.

According to Zhu, the planning team met primarily on Zoom due to the Academy’s hybrid winter term, COVID safety protocols and quarantine procedures. The entire planning team did not have the chance to meet in-person, and no sector of the team met in-person until late February after the Academy’s post-return quarantine on campus.

Park explained that the decision to host TEDx with a hybrid structure was to accommodate the Academy’s COVID safety protocols. “We were definitely cognizant of the fact that not a lot of people could come due to social distancing. We could have less than half the normal capacity of the Bowld. We really wanted speakers' friends to make the event but also to have our off-campus community to watch their friends, watch their families,” Park said. “We decided to have a partially in-person audience because we want the speakers to feel that rewarding experience of at least having people there to support them physically after they have worked so hard.”

Faculty Adviser and Assistant Director of Student Activity Kelly McGahie acknowledged the support provided by the Dean’s Office and Facilities Management. “I give a lot of credit to the Dean’s Office and all the people in Facilities who have really shifted our way of doing business,” McGahie said.

When deciding the theme of this year’s event, the organizers came up with three options on their final shortlist: “Are We There Yet?”, “Double Take” and “The Search.” The organizing committee eventually held an open vote and an overwhelming majority favored the key word, “search.”

Park spoke about the consideration behind the selection of the theme “The Search.” “We were constantly thinking: what do we really want this event to look like? We want to recognize everything that’s happening around us right now and to acknowledge that this is a tumultuous time filled with uncertainty,” Park said. “We want to give students the freedom to express themselves and give us hope for the future. This is how we landed on the idea of search, it captured this ongoing process of searching for physical and emotional support during the COVID pandemic.”

Upper and Content Director Felix Zou added, “‘Search’ was a very popular word this year and it speaks to its suitable value in this particular year with the repercussions of the pandemic and social distancing.”

The organizers initially received around 40 speaker applications, and were forced to make hard decisions in choosing speakers to fill the 7-9 spots available.

Park noted that the Organizational Team considered the impact that each speech would have on the Exeter community when reviewing applications. “We looked at each application individually, but also as a group,” Park said. “We wanted Talks that were focusing on tangible actions that students can take after the event. Our Organizational Team wanted a diverse set of students to represent The Search, finding people from all different grades with different experiences, different religions and different backgrounds. Ultimately, we want our community to grow.”

Damon reflected on her decision to speak at the event. “I have always really loved TED Talks. I've been watching and listening to them since I was eight. I had a teacher who was obsessed with TED Talks who really got my interest in them, and when I saw Exeter was doing a TEDx event I thought ‘I'd love to be a part of that,’” Damon said.

Chen, whose Talk was about temporarily losing her period and discovering the preciousness of “being alive,” explained her motivation to speak up about her personal memories. “Because I learned a lot from the experience I shared in my Talk, I wanted to share that, and when I saw TEDx calling for speakers, I thought, ‘Maybe this is the opportunity,’” Chen said.

“The TED Talks I listened to before inspired me to turn in my application,” Chen continued. “Some of these speakers made themselves vulnerable but it made such an impact on the audience. I want the audience to know that you’re not alone and there are values to be gained from the challenges you’re facing. My speech is about a problem, but it sounded optimistic to people. That response is genuine. I’m really grateful for what happened because of what I’ve learned from it, and I hope people can see their challenges as opportunities too.”

Jain spoke about her self-discovery and the process of her religious relationship as a Jain. “My grandfather passed away on January 25th. I have always been dealing with that on top of all the schoolwork and activities. He would go to temple every single morning at 6:00 AM. He has done five 18-mile mountain hike pilgrimages on his bare feet. I really wanted to speak up about how he’s impacted me and my relationship with Jainism, which led me to apply as a speaker,” Jain said.

Jain also cited the vulnerability of her speech as a possible inspiration for the audience. “I hope through the vulnerability of my speech, the audience might share some of their similar experiences and struggles with religion,” Jain said. “I think a lot of us in Exeter have a complicated relationship with religion and our school doesn’t encompass a lot of religious traditions. Our belief doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to encompass all aspects of a religion. I hope more students can understand what spirituality means to them after hearing about my experience.”

Other speakers, such as Rajaram, decided to take a more informative approach to his talk. “I was inspired to speak at the event by the large amount of TEDx talks before me, especially Anish Mudide’s amazing speech. I talked about cryptography in an informative way so people can understand my passion for STEM,” Rajaram said.

The vulnerability and honesty with the audience was appreciated by those who were there to watch it in person. “The event surpassed any expectations that I had for what the event could have, and how it changed my thought beyond just that one moment I was watching it,” prep Sarah Sargent said. “The topics that were selected, I think, were just conceptually phenomenal.”

“Dellara’s story of a glass child was probably the one that spoke to me the most, just the acknowledgement and finding the term of a glass child was so impactful on her life,” Sargent continued. “I feel like I went through that same experience when that happened to me, and so something so specific to me. Something very specific as having a sibling have a mental health condition that impacts your life is something that I related to deeply, and having someone else at this school with the same experience was so unique and special.”

Prep Angel Guo also found a deeper connection to the even through the vulnerability shown by the speakers. “I really enjoyed Kodi’s speech because he talked about his experience being homeless. It was really heart wrenching to hear his experiences about something that I am fortunate enough to have never experienced. I think it's really brave of Kodi to share his story.”

Attendees also found the event generally enriching to their social and academic knowledge. Lower Cassie Perez reflected on the content of the Talks. “I was thinking a lot about things like math, and [Nathan’s] speech where [he was] talking about math education in the U.S. I thought that was interesting because I’ve never really been a fan of the Common Core. All of the speeches gave different impressions to me. Some of them were social impressions, some in how I treat others and others in how I think about the world around me and think about my education, things like that,” Perez said.

Upper Jose Vivanco agreed. “That night when I talked to my parents, I kept referencing the things I learned in the TEDx Talks, and it was very interesting overall to hear all these new things that I had no idea were problems and no idea you could find solutions to them,” Vivanco said. “The fact that they were all my schoolmates was especially impactful because at Exeter we’re always taught that they bring youth from every quarter, and this is the perfect example of it. Everyone has a different story or a different point of view and the experiences and examples that they talked about were completely foreign to me, so it was such a nice opportunity to be able to understand my peers and to be able to hear about what they’re learning.”

The organizers hoped that the event gave a clue to the diversity of students at the Academy. “Attending the event tonight, you really can find a lot of diverse points of views and perspectives,” lower and Content Director Vibha Udayakumar said. “I learned that, as someone who has attended, it's okay to look at other people's point of view and learn from them. And this goes back to our theme of this speech because everyone should go on their own personal searches.”

Zhu shared her hopes for the Talks’ impact on the Exeter community. “I really hope that people are able to walk away from these Talks feeling like they gained or learned something about their community, especially since the Talks were given by Exonians. I also think it's so amazing to attend school events because they allow you to see what people in your community are doing, see all the things that the people you're surrounded by are doing and what they love and what they want to show you,” Zhu said. “Being able to see that makes me feel so much more connected to Exeter, and I hope that that's something that happened for everyone that attended.”

“I know there were a lot of lowerclassmen in the in-person audience today, and that makes me so happy because I think these kinds of community engagement events are really the things that help build Exeter’s culture,” Zhu continued. “When we're all coming together and interacting and seeing what everyone's doing and letting all of our individual passions and paths come together, I think that's so wonderful. It's that feeling that I really hope people walk away with, just feeling really good and inspired, but also connected and proud to be here at Exeter.”