I was lucky enough to receive an invitation to guest speak at AVID’s College Fair at Ball Arena last week.  AVID’s dearest employee Kristin Lockwood, extended an invite to me my longtime AVID buddy Zanayah Shanks to miss school to spend our day speaking to AVID students at Ball Arena and attending that night’s Nuggets game.  This was a great chance for me to get thrown into public speaking to a big crowd and I’m proud to say I passed on good information to the other students. 

I had to leave my house at around 10 in the morning since we had to be to Ball Arena around noon.  My mother surprised me by letting me drive to the arena. I’m not saying I’m a bad driver but as a beginner, it was dodgy to throw me on to I-25 with minimal highway experience. During the drive, I experienced a bit of snow and rain which I felt pretty confident with. 

We arrived at the arena about an hour early and I met up with Ms. Lockwood and Zanayah.  We have been doing these AVID leadership roles inside and outside of Greeley West for as long as we can remember. Last summer we were even able to be student leaders at the Summer Institute where AVID trains new teachers.  But this was a special opportunity for me because we had attended this very fair last year as juniors. 

We weren’t just us representing Greeley West, we were accompanied by our friends we met over the Summer Institute who were also invited to be a part of this panel.

Ever since I got into joining our school newspaper I’ve been using it as a tool to help me on getting comfortable with public speaking.  This opportunity gave me the chance to three different breakout sessions with around 300 students and teachers each time.  This experience was definitely a huge accomplishment. It was nice seeing familiar faces from Greeley Central and Northridge that helped me become comfortable with speaking in front of the crowd. I did end up getting booed by them as I had to let them know that I was a senior in the best high school that Greeley has.

After the panel was done we stayed to listen to another guest speaker who’s a former Central alumni and he called me out in front of 1,000 people and addressed me by “lil bro.” Of course, I was proud of still being able to make people laugh although it was throwing a bit of shade at our rival schools.

After my mother I had had ventured into downtown Denver to get some grub (Chipotle), we returned to watch a guaranteed win for the Nuggets (c’mon, they were playing the Wizards.)  It ended up being a historical game as Nikola Jokic became the first player to hit a triple-double against every opponent of the NBA while being on the same team. Only Lebron James and Russel Westbrook have done it, but they have been on multiple teams. Not only that, Jokic was able to have a perfect game going 10/10 in the paint.

Reflecting on this day, I appreciate the fact that these are experiences that I genuinely didn’t think I would have when I started high school. I’m grateful for having the opportunity to be a speaker and to spread some AVID love to other students in Colorado.