SchwartzBlog

Hello World!
I know, I know. It has been a while since I have blogged. Well for those of you who are just longing to read more, I do have a few posts that I am drafting so hang in there!

The other reason I haven’t put up a post in a while is because I sent the link to my blog to a few college admissions officers, and the post before this is a good one.

So what have I been doing? well, Over the past few days I have been at the New York State Council for Leadership and Student Activities Annual Conference in Buffalo. So let’s get into it…

Buffalo is about a 7 hour drive from westchester, so while the conference didn’t officially start until sunday, my school took the bus trip up the day before. But as I had a concert on saturday night, I had to make other arrangements. I took an 10:55 flight out of JFK Sunday morning which got me to Buffalo around 2:30 (the flight was delayed an hour). After getting my bags I headed to the hotel where I met up with some unbelievable people. For those of you who do not know, I attended a student leadership conference last June in Indianapolis. And those same people from the New York delegation at that conference in June were all at this conference. So it was an awesome reunion.

After orientation and a few ice breakers, We all went to the main hall and heard the words of The “Original” Mike Smith. And I was so impressed by his message that I ended up talking to him afterwords for half an hour. The following day I saw a keynote by Harriet Turk, followed by some workshops, idea exchanges, a banquet and a dance. And the last day I saw a keynote by Ted Wiese, which was preceded by a surprise visit from Governor David Patterson. After Ted’s speech we saw some advertisements for future conferences, and got on buses heading home.

All of these speakers brought something different to the table. Lessons that while one may think are simple, are not often the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Leadership. What I got from Ted was that fear is man-made. We create fear based on what we think we know, and it drives us crazy. But fear can be demolished just as quickly as it can arise. And as leaders, we have the power to demolish that fear in others. But to do that, we need to demolish it within ourselves. Harriet Turk had a similar message. The first thing she said that stuck with me was that the average teenager hears over 140,000 negative statements directed at them before the graduate, but less than 10,000 positive statements. The fact of that matter is, some kids are cruel. But as student leaders we have the power to change the impact those kids have.

The “Original” Mike Smith had quite a few messages, but there was one that really stuck with me. Humans are creatures of habit, and have a habit of doing what they see. They only remember about 20% of the words spoken to them, and you have little control on what those words will be. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your character. And your character becomes your destiny. So anything you say can be remembered. They can become someone’s thoughts, actions, habits, and so on. Everything you do matters. Everything you do has the ability to have a much bigger impact that you expect. For better or worse. A true leader is never off duty. Because especially with the current role of technology in our lives, everything we do has the opportunity to have a much bigger effect than intended.

As there are many parts of my life that define me, there are specific experiences that have made me who I am. These conferences fall into that category. Since 2007 I have been to 6 leadership conferences. Some with a subset of my student council, some with a friend, and some on my own. And not only has every conference taught me unforgettable lessons, but every conference has gotten me to take a look at who I am and how I can improve. Every conference has given me new friends, both young an old. And every conference has had me sitting with a keynote speaker trying to find out who I am going to be when I grow up. In short, these conferences represent the best experiences I have ever had.

Whether it be Saratoga Springs, Buffalo, Denver or Indianapolis, These conferences have been unforgettable, and the lessons I have taken from them are what will guide me throughout the rest of my life.

First off, for everybody that has been reading these posts from start to finish I do commend you, and I hope I haven’t had to many grammatical errors along the way. Now, this blog started on Sunday, June 20th. Since then I have had around 400 hits, which is much more than the 40 I expected. However, some of you may have noticed that my blog posts are quite long. Well, for those of you who enjoy reading those long posts I am sorry to tell you that they are coming to an end. The reason why I have had so much to say the past week was because of the packed week that I have had. First was my RedRover internship, then came the 2010 NASC conference. So for the past 2 weeks, I have done a lot, and I have done a lot worth blogging. So now I am on my way to the French Woods Festival of Preforming Arts. It is an awesome camp. I will be up there from now until around september 3rd. I may come home earlier, I may come home later. For my friends who are reading this, I will probably be out of cell service for that period, so don’t text me as you will not get a response. But I won’t be doing things like going on conference calls or going to international speedways every day, so there just won’t be that much to blog about. It has been the best first 2 weeks of summer ever. And I cannot wait for camp. see you all soon…

Before I end this NASC blog set I would like to bring up one more item that happened to me at the airport. As I sat in the terminal waiting for my flight, I was approached by a girl about my age who introduced herself as Kelsey. Kelsey lived in Virginia and had also gone to the NASC conference. Kelsey and I talked for an hour, and I have to say she was pretty smart. And what I realized after I said goodbye to her was, that was what I was going to miss. There aren’t people in my school who I can sit down with and have a mature conversation about politics or economics. That is, that are my age. I have mature conversations about politics and economics with people at my high school all the time, but those people have 10+ years on me. So that is what I am going to miss. I am going to miss people like Kelsey who I can both relate to on a personal level (being my age) and at the same time have a mature conversation that gets the gears in my head turning. So that brings us to the plane ride home. Im writing the blog on the plane ride home. That’s it for today (I think), see you all soon…

So, the end. I have to say this falls into my top 2 experiences in my life, and the other was the NASC conference last year. So today we woke up and went to Center Grove High School, right outside of Indianapolis, Indiana. Then came the T-Shirt exchange. Let me go into some more detail. At this conference, state pride is a big deal. A really big deal. To the point where state cheers are all that happen over meals. One of the ways that states show spirit is by wearing state T-shirts every day. But the last day, it is tradition for one to trade his/her state shirts for shirts that he/she have seen other states wear throughout the conference and would like to wear themselves. So this morning was the T-Shirt exchange, and because New York is such a popular state (shocker), I had no problem getting some nice shirts. The one shirt that I didn’t get was a shirt that Washington wore one day that had the city of Seattle on the front and a Starbucks coffee cup on the back. Unfortunately there were only around 4 people from washington at the conference so those shirts were in short supply. Sorry dad . Anyway, we had our exchange, went to our last state meeting, took some more pictures, exchanged some hugs, and then went to our last general session. The keynote speaker was Mr. Byron V. Garrett. I give it so much emphases because he was pretty egotistical, considering we watched a promo video of him right before he walked on stage. Seriously, who needs to promote himself to students immediately before he presents himself? Isn’t a promotion just to get the customer initially engaged? On a more serious note, Byron has accomplished a lot. He wrote a few books, worked with some impressive politicians, and is currently head of the PTA (and I seriously doubt anybody who reads my blog doesn’t know what the PTA is). Byron talked about being confident. He said that we couldn’t let anything or anyone stand in our way. That there would be serious obstacles in our way as we started our journey to change the world, and the only way to get past them would be to never lose confidence. Not hope, confidence. Let me be clear, this was not a corny speaker. He knew exactly what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it. He was my kind of speaker. Then we watch a video summarizing our time at NASC 2010. We got on a bus, went to the hotel, picked up our stuff and went to the airport. And that was it. Goodbye NASC, I will truly, truly miss you.

I know this may seem redundant but oh my god today was awesome. I’m not sure where to start so let’s do the normal thing and start from the morning. The morning was just another reminder that I need to start drinking coffee. I got up, and the first thing I did when I got downstairs was went to Starbucks to get hot chocolate, and got on the bus for Center Grove High School. Since breakfast wasn’t great, I took the opportunity to read The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. The feature was a great article about cyber-bullying. Anyway, we had our state meeting and went to our second general session. The speaker was a guy named Mark who talked about living our life to the fullest and more importantly not comparing our life to anyone else’s. Then came the exiting part. NASC joined forces with the Boys and Girls Club. 2 to 3 student leaders were paired with an underprivileged child who lived in indianapolis. It was an eyeopener. You hear about poverty and you hear about suffering in the news all the time. But you hear about it happening in Sudan, you never hear about it in Indianapolis. So I was paired with a 10 year old named Jakobe. Well, Jakobe was a tough kid for a while. I couldn’t exactly tell what he had been through, but on the other hand I wasn’t sure I wanted to know either. He was doing his absolute best to make sure that I couldn’t get to know him and we couldn’t have fun. I wasn’t really sure what to do at that point. Then, someone I barley knew stepped into help. Her name was Rachel Smith. Rachel wants to be a psychologist some day, and I don’t doubt for a second that she could be one tomorrow. So Rachel stepped in and started to have some conversation with Jakobe. And while it took some effort, she was able to get him to open up. What we found out about him was scary, but it definitely gave me a different outlook on life. As for Rachel, I really couldn’t have connected with this kid without her. After we said goodbye to Jakobe, Rachel and I got on a bus for the IUPUI stadium (you can find out what that is on an earlier post, or just google it). When we got there we went off to our respective states (Rachel lives in Oklahoma) and got ready for the closing ceremony. Just to be clear, The conference didn’t end that day, but that was the last night that we as delegates were together so that was when we had the closing ceremony. The ceremony was amazing. First we heard from our conference tri-chairs, and then from our very own motivational teacher. She told us the story of a young boy with a terminal illness in the 1908s. He was 7 and his only dream was to become an Arizona State Highway Patrolman. So the Arizona Highway Patrol made him an honorary member and got him a custom made uniform in a matter of days. He received his full uniform just hours before his death. So even at 7, he had died living his dream, all because of some good citizens. And then, those highway patrolmen thought “why can’t we do this with other children? why can’t we take every terminally ill child we can, and grant their wish?” And so, the Make-A-Wish foundation was born. Then our motivational speaker gave all of the delegates a keychain. On the keychain were 3 paperclips, shaped like the number one. The purpose of those paperclips was to show that you don’t need some expensive object to send an unbelievably clear message. ONE, Offer No Excuses. The point was/is to give these paperclips to 3 people in your life who push you to offer no exudes, to be the best you can be. Because chances are, the people who care enough about you to push you to do your best are going to be the people, who could understand the value of a paperclip. Because they would know that you recognize the fact that they push you to do your best, and there is nothing you could do to thank them enough. So we got these paperclips, and I need to give them to 3 people who push me to strive for my best. For some the answer is easy, but for some the answer is hard. Anyway, lets move on. We then moved on to the candlelit cerimony, where as the 1500 of us held candles and one was lit aflame. Then the one flame was passed from one to two friends who passed it to two of their friends, to demonstrate how fast we can spread ideas and leadership if we just work together. And then it hit me. This was the last time I would ever be at a conference like this. An NASC conference that for two years in a row had proven to be the best two experiences in my entire life, and they were just about to end. I cried. We all cried. It was a tough moment. The New York delegation was made up of at least 85% seniors, so there were a lot of us that knew we would never get to go to a conference like this ever again. So we cried and we hugged and we cheered for our state all the way back to the hotel. And that was it. And since it was so late when we got back and I had woken up pretty early that day, I was too tired to finish writing this blog. So I’m actually finishing this blog on day 6 (yes there is a day 6) I’m going to post this, wait about 3-4 hours, and then post the day 6 blog, because my boss once told me never to put too much information on my blog in one day, and I am trying to abide by it (in a sense) The reason I bring this up is because for the people who are actually following all of my posts (and there must be some because i’m averaging 50 hits a day), I’d like you to know that this post is actually about yesterday. So that’s it. See you all in a few hours…

OK. Today was AWSOME!!!!!!!!!!!!! Let’s start from the beginning. My morning didn’t exactly start off the way I wanted it to. For one, I woke up at 6:15. I had lost my voice (shocker) and I wasn’t feeling too great. After breakfast the group went to IUPUI (Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis). I met up with an old friend Michael Sarich (http://teentruthlive.com/about/bios/ and scroll down) and I talked personally to another speaker Ed Gerety, who if you read my most recent post you know about. Then I went into a seminar about personal finance, which was actually pretty helpful. This guy talked about making money over time and how you could mange your spending. But once again, what I took away from the seminar was something that he didn’t really touch up on that much. A bulk of his seminar was on investing. He talked about how he knew a student who worked at Starbucks all semester and make $3000. The following semester, his grandfather put $500 into Starbucks stock which 6 months later had grown to $3500. But here is the problem with that. Stocks are risky. I know that when the recession hit, Starbucks lost 97% of their revenue. Now that stock went back up, but it just goes to show you that you can’t always see what is coming in the stock market. You shouldn’t just throw your money into a blue chip company and hope for it to go up. You need to be smarter with it(Thanks dad). Ok so back to what I learned. What Peter (the speaker) talked about that my father never really covered with me was about my credit score. Now the reason my dad hasn’t gone into credit scores is because he knows that my credit score doesn’t count against me until after I turn 18 1/2. But what peter told me is that even though I shouldn’t have anything bad on my credit score yet, I still might. Because mistakes happened with this stuff all of the time. I don’t know why, but it just does. So I haven’t checked my credit score yet, but i’m planning on it just as soon as I finish this blog. Ok on with the day. The next place we went was the Indianapolis World War Memorial, which was really something else. It’s kind of ironic the way it came to be. Originally it was planned to be a shrine for the first world war. They didn’t think that after what had happened that there would be another one. But there was. And since they had all of this history, they ended up turning it into a museum. Oh wait, thats not ironic. Whatever. Then we went to the Indy 500 track. And I saw cars that blew me away. I mean, a 1963 ferrari, a 1969 Bugatii, it was unbelievable. I ended up buying a few souvenirs for some big car fanatics back home, and then I rapped for a few other delegates, and got on a bus for dinner. The whether wasn’t great, and we had turkey sandwiches for the second meal that day, but we made the best of it. We cheered for hours and hours. And the voice that I had gotten back from not talking that much throughout the course of the day, I lost again. Smooth move right? Anyway, we got back to the busses, I chatted with a few people from Indiana, and we got back to the hotel. It was a really long day. They’re all long days. But then again, they are flying by. Thats all I have for tonight, I’ll see you all tomorrow.

Ok to start off, I am officially on a “tsup” basis with half of my high school administration. I just would like to put it out there. You may think I’m a dork, I mean I’m at a leadership conference. But today when I called my asst. principal to tell him about the conference (don’t ask why) he answered “tsup” which makes him the second administrator to do that. Ok lets get to the conference. IT WAS UNBELIEVABLE! So during the pre conference trip I saw a lot of chicago, but not a lot of Indianapolis and not a lot of Indiana. But that really changed today. So let us start from the morning and work our way through the day. The conference started essentially the same way it did last year in Denver. We went to the school, met people from other states, looked at exhibits, and then again hung out with people from other states. Then we went into our first general session where we heared from our first keynote Ed Gerety. Mr. Gerety focussed on essentially seizing the moment (or as Mr. Taylor would say, carpe diem) and in addition not judging people. But he hit me with something he only hinted at. He asked us two questions, and I would like you the reader to take the time to ponder these two questions

Question 1: If you were told you had one hour to live, who would you call to say goodbye?

Question 2: If the whole world were told they only had one hour to live, who would call you?

And that second question hit me really hard. I mean I know that my immediate family would call me, but Im not sure who else. I mean I could guess, but I really don’t know for a fact, and neither does anybody.

Ok let’s get back to the conference. So after Mr. Gerety spoke we got on some buses and went to this home. About 150 student leaders got off their buses and were met by 3 students, all younger than us, who introduced us to their home. And for the next 3 hours we got to experience live in the real Indiana. Not just in a hotel and high school. We ate with them, played games, sat around and talked. It was truly a great experience. Not only because of that, but because of who the other kids were that came with us. We had hours to find out more about not just Indiana but about Texas, Idaho, Utah, and Pennsylvania. It was such a great experience, and I really can’t stress that enough. So it’s 11pm and im getting up in 7 hours. I appreciate you taking the time to read this, I hope you will show some comments, but most importantly I hope you take the time to really think about those two questions

See you all tomorrow…

So today I woke up in Indianapolis. I had a nice breakfast, read The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and went to the mall to buy some new cross trainers. So it was a nice morning. Worked on some stuff for RedRover, sent out some emails. Then the fun really started. We as a state went to victory field to watch a AAA (minor league) baseball game. So here is when the fun in writing this begins. I had a bandana on with a hat on top of that. I looked like the stereotypical rapper. Now for those of you who know me really well, I can rap but am nothing like a stereotypical rapper. I did an experiment. I wanted to see the way people reacted to me when I dressed differently. I didn’t act differently for the most part, it was just how I dressed. And I saw some serious results. People, both kids and adults treated me differently. I guess it also helped that I told them I was a rapper and actually rapped for a few of them from time to time throughout the night. So anyway I met some people, u’ll see the picture on Facebook soon if you want to. And that was the day. Tomorrow the official conference starts. See you all tomorrow!

Before I start talking about NASC I would like to just thank everybody who is reading this, and please feel free to comment. OK, NASC stands for the National Association of Student Councils. They host multiple conferences over the year but this is their main one. It brings in student leaders from around the country and not only teaches them how to lead their school but lets them share ideas on how they bring their school together. So this is my second conference, and honestly I don’t think this can beat the first one. The first conference was in Denver, Colorado. Day 1 was the pre conference which included white water rafting, a cog rail ride up a mountain, and a music concert at night. Day 2 the conference began with keynote speakers and hanging out at the high school it was at. Day 3 had more speakers and student seminars and some serious cheer-offs. Day 4 we went to the university of colorado at boulder, and We learned even more including more keynotes and idea sharing. We also had a ceremony at their football stadium. And Day 5 we had our last keynote and flew home. Now, this happened a year ago and it was probably the greatest experience I ever had. I met some unbelievable people, learned more than I could of ever imagined, and strengthened some great relationships. So lets get back to this year. This year’s conference is in Indianapolis. So right now I am flying to Chicago to meet up for the pre conference trip. Let me go into a little more detail. I am from New York. New York is awesome and obviously the best state ever. So, all of the New York kids meet up a day before the conference and tour around an area near the conference. Other states do this as well.So since I am the only one from my school that is going to this conference, I am currently flying alone to chicago where I will meet up with the rest of the new york kids. We are going to tour around chicago for a day, and then take a bus to Indianapolis. And tomorrow we meet up with all of the other states and begin my second NASC National Conference on Leadership and Student Activities. I cannot wait. GO NY!