stay in 17 17 JoyceTEDx
hi
i’m george an 18 years old singer and
songwriter based in taiwan
i’m one of the tad usb here today but
before i start my speech
i want to ask you a question
what do you expect to hear from 18 years
old
well look i’m 18 not 18. i’m simply a
high school student who loves to sing
and write songs and the reason i’m still
singing and writing is because my mom
said i’m good at it so yeah
i’m not going to pretend to be some
perfect role model because that is
definitely
not who i am i’m standing here today
is to share the story of my seventeen
with you guys
and how i just wanna stay in 17 forever
so let’s get into it well about two
years ago
i was studying 10th grade in taiwan girl
senior high school which is where we are
right now
suffering from school pressure and
endless exam i was basically one of
those straight c
students and nothing i did was helping
the situation
and there’s a scenario she came up and
she told me
if you can change the environment change
yourself
if you can change your environment
change yourself
have any of you heard a sentence before
show me your hand show me your hand if
you have
look like some of you have heard this
before
well this sentence in chinese will say
but i always found there is one little
flaw in this concept
is that when people heard about this
sentence most of them
will jump right into the changes apart
we won’t even consider to change the
environment because it sounds
complicated
and unrealistic and that’s when it hit
me
well i gotta at least try to change the
environment before
i give up on myself right
and um speaking of my environment back
then
i was at school yeah of course i was at
school where else i could be right
and that is a problem you see i spent
almost 10 hours per day
in school but when i’m at school
there’s always so many things are going
on at the same time i don’t really have
time
to experience life and figure out who i
am or what i want
i don’t really have myself
that is a moment when i found out that i
might need to take a break
and live my life a little more also
the moment i started panicking
does that mean i gotta give up on school
now or like should i study home school
myself
from now on without how people are gonna
see me
i mean my friend my family or
my neighbors yeah my neighbors could be
a problem
so after i spent some time to carry
myself down and also having discussion
with my parents and my teachers
i get on my courage i made a huge
decision
i decided to drop out of high school for
one year
to see where you can take me and i’m not
gonna lie
this decision i made had changed my
whole universe
completely in a good way
it really changed me in a good way you
see after i dropped out i’ve got plenty
of time to try new things that i’m
actually into i started writing my own
music
and i started singing at several
restaurants i got my own busking license
and also i built my own homemade
recording studio
i’ve done tons of amazing things
throughout the whole year since i
finally got time to actually listen to
my own voice
but mentally and physically
and one of the highlights throughout the
whole year was during the time i stand
at a restaurant
i experienced some bright side of the
society as i’ve always been
but i also found some dark side too an
unforgettable one was when a restaurant
manager
he fired me through a simple text in
three am in the morning
and then he just blocked me from the
whole work group he told me that i was
too young to sing
even though i’ve been working there for
almost half an year
i didn’t even tell my parents that i was
getting fired because i feel
kind of ashamed of it and now they know
i kept asking myself that what did i do
wrong or am i not good enough to be a
singer or am i not special enough to be
a performer
but then all of a sudden all the
anxiousness
and desperation actually ended up
letting me to write my first song
which is discovered by this record level
that i’m working with right now
so it’s like a dream right who knows
that getting fire is actually a blessing
in disguise
and that is how i learned a huge lesson
in my 17
which is life is unpredictable but every
can keep listening to your own voice and
follow your heart
things will always ended up right
because the difference between listening
to your voice
and listening to others is that yours
will never betray you seventeen
oh please don’t please don’t let back it
instead
maybe one more day just stay
this is a song i wrote called stage 17
also my debut single
but as soon as 17 is not simply about to
stay in the age of 17.
it is actually about to stay in a
mindset to remain
a passion and to remind me to always
listen to my own voice like when i was
and i believe that all of us must have
this one precious period
when we were all still listening to my
own voice to listen to our own voice
without any hesitation and for me
it was in my 17 and you can find your 17
too
so at the end of my speech i have one
last sentence to say
that could conclude all the words i’ve
said today
and that is a quote from the book the
alchemist
which is remember
that wherever your heart is there you
will
find your treasure i’m joyce thank you
for listening