Being 17 may sound like I have been alive for a short time. Some of you may say that at 17 I haven’t gone through enough experiences to talk about life, or that I am not mature enough to get into deep conversations and talk about Who I am? What I want to be? or even Why do I exist? And to tell the truth, two years ago I would have agreed with that argument, but today after finishing the Innovation Academy program I think that I am ready to make my voice be heard and to talk about my best two years in life and its experiences.
Like any normal story, let's start from the beginning. When I was 15 years old and a sophomore, I hated school. I felt that all of my classes were boring, and they were not worth my time; I wanted to be a professional water polo player. Why should I be worrying about something as insignificant as a grade, when I didn’t feel motivated to learn? Most of you would say things like “grades are important for you to get into university” or “with bad grades you won't have a successful future.” I am not saying that having bad grades is correct, but do you think a number between 1 and 7 should define your future? I can't believe how prestigious institutions like Stanford, Harvard and Brown take into consideration that “number” so much; do they really value us, the students or are they only seeking reputation and external glory?
This was my problem; I didn’t care about school, until one day something attracted my eye. There was this new problem known as the “Innovation Academy” that Mr. Topf, a current IB Diploma English teacher, was starting. The program consisted of learning through real-life experiences and the program's purpose was: “To exemplify a culture of excellence, create passion for learning, and adapt the way we learn to improve the way we live” (we developed this at the end of our junior year). I realized that I had two options in my life: to get into the sometimes boring, teacher-led IB world or take a risk and join this new program. You probably already know that I chose this new program and finally finished it today. Now that you have some background information, let me explain why experiences are the best way to learn.
TED Talks: some of the world's greatest presentations. If you don’t know what Ted Talks are, stop reading this and go watch one now! In 11th grade, began by designing our own Ted Talk, presenting in front of our family and different classes. The cool thing about these presentations was that they needed to be different from the typical presentation that you see in school. Instead of having 100 words per slide and a white background, our challenge was to use as few words as possible, and transmit our message through media and stories, that way our audience would be able to connect with us and not fall asleep. I personally found this new type of presenting to be one of my strengths from the beginning of the IA until the end. I knew how to talk to people, how to be empathetic with an audience and actually know how to address to them so that they understand my message.
After that I was thinking what could be better than making a kick-ass presentation? What could follow the TEDX-Talks structure? The answer is Finance. I had never had any relationship with finance; I didn’t know what a stock market was or even what the word “capital” meant until this project was presented to us. We were challenged to invest $3,000 US dollars in the stock market! You are probably thinking how are 15-16 year old kids going to spend so much money when they didn’t know stocks existed 3 seconds ago? Where are they going to get that money? Well, that’s the great part of having a teacher that believes in his job and believes in what we are doing; he was going to be our sponsor and we needed to prove to him why we should invest in the different stocks. As I mentioned earlier this is the power of experience, even when we are talking about money. I learned about the different types of investment such as stocks, bonds, ETFs, mutual funds, etc and then I had to present where I thought it would be better to invest. Each one in the class (13 students) presented, and let me tell you that the presentations were awesome! But then Mr. Topf, told us “never put all of your eggs in one basket." We decided to separate our cash and invest in what we considered our best investment options. After just one year of investment, we gained more than 500 US dollars, which we invested in BlendZ; and yes, we were only 15-16 year old kids. If these two projects didn’t motivate you enough wait to hear our next real life project. |
Have you seen a documentary before? To tell you the truth, I thought documentaries were boring and I hadn’t even seen one; it was just what my friends said; that’s the level of immaturity I had before. Thankfully this would change because our next project was to produce a 20-minute documentary based on some problem that we wanted to expand on and teach the school and Peruvian community. With my best friend Domenico, we partnered up and chose the “lack of financial literacy in Peru.” Can you believe that two 16 year olds knew more about how to use a credit card and how to invest than more than 40% of Peru’s population? We went to talk to experts, banks, supermarkets, interviewed and surveyed hundreds of random people in the different social economic classes in Peru and the results were very similar: the lack of financial literacy was real. Apart from gaining enough knowledge to produce a documentary, learn how to edit videos and make a 30-minute presentation about it, I learned something even more important: to help others and understand them.
I want to talk about one final project that changed my life completely, and most of you know it as BlendZ. As seniors, we had to start our own business, but we didn’t have any information and we could do whatever we wanted. We ended up starting BlendZ--a smoothie company. We separated in roles: CEO’s, Marketing, Human Resources, Director of culture, CFO’s, and every possible role that a real business needs. We passed through difficult moments, where each one of us had to invest 80 dollars in BlendZ and sacrifice our weekends to go and cut fruit until we learned through the process and started working better. The company started going well, we got back our 80 dollars, had our own supplier, bought a freezer, coolers, refrigerators and even our own cart! The cool thing about BlendZ is that all of the profit that we made, we would donate it to a program that we created known as “Habla Roosevelt” were we hired some teachers and taught the kids of our janitors how to speak English and have a good time. this was great because with just 17 years I was able to start my own company and make it work almost on its own! Planning sales, finding volunteers and just being part of this experience has made me grow immensely and realize how difficult it is to have a unique and cool company.
I can say and I am 100% sure of this, that all of the experiences that I have gone through in the IA have helped to shape me as a teen, as a learner and as a thinker. I finally feel prepared to go into college and keep on challenging myself like the IA did. I know that I should always follow a purpose in everything that I do, that I should always have a “why” before acting and making something. I don’t regret any of these last 2 years with my incredible group of innovators and a great teacher like Corey because they have made me a better person and taught me through experiences to learn to think and how to learn. I must say that I am a lucky guy, because not many students end up with the skills and experience that I have in my hands now, so thank you!