Huge s/o to Austin Helms, author of Orientation to Graduation, for spending time with our juniors/seniors today & sharing his EntrepreDOer story. #LNCPride pic.twitter.com/qlYASrbnMq— Craig Smith (@CSmithGoBlue) November 15, 2017
His "O2G" talk covers a wide-range of topics and areas, but I would say the overall themes deal with making the most out of your opportunities, goal-setting, and maintaining a healthy life-balance. Austin also shares stories of his entrepreneurship ventures from a very early age, coined as self-proclaimed entrepe-DO-ur.
This summer, when I was looking for a potential speaker for our Class of 2020, I polled the aforementioned student groups anonymously to determine if they believe bringing Austin back would be valuable. The response was overwhelmingly positive.
Therefore, Austin returned to speak to our current juniors today.
For the opportunity to win a free copy of Austin's book, I asked students to submit their reflections/take-away's from the visit. Here are my received submissions:
| What I took away, is that what ever you strive for, you can make it happen if you set goals for your future |
| you can do anything if you set your mind to it. he was a very inspiration speaker |
| You can be successful even if you come from a small town. It takes hard work and dedication to be successful, not your upbringing. I feel really inspired to start achieving my goals. |
| I took away from Austin’s message is that to always have goals in life. If you really want to achieve those goals, try to write them out and hang them up so you can see it and check it off once achieved. |
| Lately I have been thinking a lot about where I want to go or what I would like to do and hearing about how Austin took advantage of every opportunity he was provided and made the best out of it all was truly inspiring. I have been provided opportunities to attend classes and talks to hear about making choices and taking opportunities but this one truly spoke to me and I plan to 1) make a goal list and be able to cross things off and 2) take advantage of every opportunity i have been provided ...... like he says ‘It’s all about choices!!’. |
| From Austin’s message, I took away that your future is all about the choices you make. Also, that setting goals will help motivate and encourage you and others to be the best version of themselves. |
| What I took away was that there are opportunities everywhere, every single person that influences him has affected his life in some way or another. I believe that if he can be able to accomplish all these goals by having them on a wall it can help me accomplish goals that weren’t available to me because it will make me unconsciously put a perspective of where my life will go |
| My favorite thing from Austin’s message was his quote about choices. I think it’s important to recognize that you can’t do everything. You need a balance of school social life and opportunities. |
| From Austin’s speech, I was able to realize that no matter who you are or where your from you can get anywhere with a few goals. He showed me that being a DOer is more important than anything. He inspired me to realize that you can achieve any goal no matter where yoh start. I appreciated his message a lot and definitely gave me a different mind set on achieving my goals. |
| I’ve learned that even if I come from a not so known place, like North Carolina, I can have an impactful future through seizing opportunities that life throws at me. I also learned that attending college will provide me with one in a lifetime opportunities that I should seize. The overall lesson learned was to take whatever life gives me and roll with it. Make the most of every moment and enjoy all the thing so you can and will do in life. |
| I took away that if I want to do something, I should put my mind to it and carry it out. Also, I should write down my goals because the writing will motivate me to carry them out. Finally, I took away that college is all about choices and balance for success. |
| I was inspired by Austins perseverance. Everything that he has done is very impressive. It is nice to know that even if you don't come from a big town you can still do great things with your life. I also liked his list of goals. I thought that it was a good idea to set goals for yourself in life and I might try setting a few of my own. On top of everything I am impressed that Austin decided what he wanted to be at age 7 and is still making that happen at age 24. |
| In college, you should strive to maintain a balance between academics, opportunities and social life. It's highly unlikely that you'll be able to achieve all 3 at the highest degree but having at least 1-2 will make college life more successful. Overall though, it's all about the choices that you make not just in college but also in life beyond school. Everything happens because of the choices you make so it's essential to make those choices count. |
| I learned that anybody can be an entrepreneur, even a small town person. Make the most of college. Try to find a balance between academics, opportunity and social life. College is all about the choices you make. Be careful how you act because others notice it. |
| Austin spoke a lot of truth today that opened my eyes. His talk revolved around the fact that he was just a kid from his hometown who had big goals, which is how I could relate to him. It seemed to me that throughout his whole life, he has been eager for opportunity and heavily motivated to be successful. However, with this he had balance, which is what I need to work on. It is hard to balance 7 classes a day with hours of homework that night, cheer everyday, my home life, and all of the extracurricular clubs I participate in. I need to work on creating an equal balance that makes me successful and happy as a person. He also spoke about having fun and taking as many opportunities in college as you can. I was interested in his experience study abroad because I think I want to in college. Austin was a great speaker with many valuable lessons in his presentation. |
| Austin really hammered in the importance of having balance in life. This is extremely relevant to me as I find myself overwhelmed with all of my school work and extra circulars. He is so right when he says that you can't focus on everything and that without a balance, your life can be stressful and chaotic. Also, I've always heard that writing down your goals can actually be helpful. It used to sound like bogus to me and it didn't make much sense. After seeing how well off Austin is, I've started to come around to the idea of writing my ambitions down. I find myself looking to much in the present and not enough into my future, and writing down my goals will help me look beyond my everyday life. Austin was a great speaker and he should definitely come in again next year to talk to the rising juniors. |
| I learned that you need to make opportunities happen, not just wait for something to happen. I also learned that you should not only live in the moment but live everyday like its a new day, not like its your last day |
| I really liked the part where he said to live every day like it’s your last, but his aunt said live everyday like it’s your first. That really stood out to me and was inspiring. |
| Today I learned that in order to achieve your goals in life, you don’t need money to start out, you just need perseverance. If you have a passion that you want to pursue, just do it. You have the power to do anything that you put your mind to. Take advice from others and don’t be afraid to be different and follow your own path. Set goals for yourself and do everything that you can to achieve them. |
| I learned from Austins presentation, that to achieve goals is not as important as setting them for yourself, and preparing yourself to achieve you're goals. I also learned that to create something strong, you must start small, from mowing yards to owning a lawn mowing company. I plan to take his advice and consider new goals as i complete my high school career, and begin college in the coming years. |
| I learned today from Austin that if you have an idea, do it. He said to take as many opportunities as you can such as traveling abroad, because you never know what day may be your last. Instead of living everyday like your last, think of it as your first, a new day to do something incredible. Set goals for yourself and try to get to as many as you can. It will help reflect and set new ones for later life. |
| I took away that you should follow your goals. I also learned that you should live your life to the fullest. I learned that choices is what sets and determines if you meet your goal. |
| He’s just a normal kid trying to become an entrepreneur. Any of us could do what he did with hard work. He had the entrepreneurial quality since he was young. |
| I learned that our choices can have a huge impact on our lives and it was clear in Austin's story. He has aspirations and goals he set himself and he pursued them. His motivation allowed him to be successful and shaped his admirable personality as well. It shows that anyone can do anything because he was just a country kid from a small town but was able to go farther and make something greater than that such as studying abroad or being an "entrepredoer". |
| One of the biggest takeaways I had was that college is all about choices, and the choices that you make in college can define your life. For me, him talking about his success in high school and then college just encourages me even more to work hard in high school so that I set myself up to continue that success in college. When he talked about how much he enjoyed studying abroad it caused me to start strongly considering studying abroad. |
| Today, I realized that any ordinary kid can go on to achieve great things in life. No matter who you are or where you are in life, if you put you mind to things, like writing out your goals, you'd be surprised how far you get and what you can achieve. |
| So, after asking a few questions, I think I know what my biggest take away from his message. Life is full of choices, helping to carve out our life story. However, we can't be passionate about just one thing, we must instead carry our passion and energy with the job we do. The fact is, we never want to do just one thing, our opinion changes, and we just want to do what we feel like doing. One day, we feel like being a pilot and the next and interior designer, or a lawyer, or a game designer, etc. We never have a solid choice. But we can always be passionate. That is what I took away from today's presentation. |
| I realized to be an entrepreneur, you don't need to be a genius, have an incredible memory, read millions of books, or have goals super high. Pretty much you don't have to be like Elon Musk, entrepredoing is about making simple creative things that will make you money. |
| I enjoyed listening to Mr. Helms' speech today. It was very informative and eye-opening about entrepreneurship and the college experience. The most important lesson that I learned from the speech was about balancing my time. I can relate this lesson to my life. I have to balance my school work along with my extracurricular activities. I also enjoyed how Mr. Helms was able to tie the lessons that he taught back to his life. Mr. Helms was able to put a comical twist to life lessons, which is very hard for many speakers to do. I was also inspired by the story about his aunt. I feel that we should live our life like it is the first day that we are on this planet. We take the time on this earth for granted, and tend to neglect the memories that we make with others. Lastly, I was inspired by his story of his start-up company. Mr. Helms was determined to be a entrepreneur, and was able to make his dream come true. The determination that I saw in his story is similar to the determination that I have towards school. I aspire to do well in school, and to do well with any task that I take on. |
| I always love having guest speakers, and this occasion was extremely special to me. I love how he was "just a kid from Vardese (I think that's the town)." It was nice to see someone from such a small town with such big dreams. I know he will continue to be successful, and that really inspires me to try harder, because i know that I can make it, even in the small-ish town of Cornelius. His words resonated with me, and I felt like I could relate on many levels. I always wanted ti create and be successful, ever since i was little. I was always trying to make money. I want so much more in life, just like he did/does. I want to be an entrepreDOeur. I really can't wait to read his book. |
| To balance and set life goals to make the most out of college. |
| Life is all about opportunities and choices. Once I graduate from high school, I have to decide where I want to go. Then I have to juggle all of the opportunities that the decision I make grants me. To succeed and enjoy life in this world, I need to be able to make decisions. There are gonna be times when I'm not going to be inclined to do the work, but I have to acknowledge my responsibilities. I enjoyed today's speaker immensely because college is a quite honestly terrifying subject to me. Today helped me learn new ways to manage my stress, so thank you for having today's speaker. |
| Austin's message made me realize a lot in both my school career and the way I live my life. I have always believed that what you do in your life has an impact on you and your choices. That you should always be open for anything thrown at you, but that one simple thing is truly not going to ruin your life or even where your life is headed. I always worry that I may not be able to do everything I truly desire, especially with my goals. We do goals in swimming and I never see much into it, but now I see that every little goal can really help you grow as a person. |
| From Austin's presentation, I learned that everybody has the opportunity to find their place in the world. Austin was just a "small town kid" and he found his place in the world and has had some amazing experiences. We should make the most out of every opportunity we have because we might not have another chance to do anything like it again until we are 60-70 years old. I learned that studying abroad is a good idea because it can open me up to amazing new ideas and understandings. |
| I really could appreciate and relate to the message of being an entrepreneur. I desire to achieve greatness and be the best that I can be. I take most opportunities that can benefit me. I believe that we are very similar. |
Bringing Austin was very intentional, as his message is directly aligned with our work to promote a more positive school-life balance for our school community. Our students continue to impress me with their reflections.
I have come to realize that sometimes, simply having our students hear a message from someone else, especially from an individual they can relate to, can make an immense difference.
Hopefully it did for this group.
Thank you for viewing,
CS
The opinions shared in this blog belong to Craig Smith and do not represent the school or district in which he works.
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