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Grade 11：Assembly

November 27, 2019

On the morning of November 21st, junior students of SHSID gathered in the XianMian Annex Auditorium for an assembly. Maggie Jiang from 11(2) was there to deliver a speech about a few tips she had for surviving high school.

She first started off by introducing a news article from the University of Chicago that had inspired her speech. The article was titled “Fish Story for the Ages: High Schooler Unearths Rare Fossil” and was about a high school student named Gabe Robinson who was deeply interested in Paleontology (the study of fossils). Gabe decided to nurture his interest and attend the summer program Stones and Bones hosted by the University of Chicago in 2019, where he was given the opportunity to not only learn from professors but also go into the field and find fossils in Wyoming’s Green River Formation. He ended up finding a perfect skull of a gar fish which turned out to be one of the largest ever discovered.

From Gabe’s story, Maggie summarized three tips:

First, you are center stage. Maggie encouraged her peers to find and pursue their talents, even if no one seems to care or understand what they are interested in—just as Gabe pursued his interest in Paleontology even though most people didn’t even know what he studied. She called for her peers to actively find opportunities related to their interests, take center stage, and show the world what talents they have to offer.

Second, summer is a lot closer than you think. Maggie encouraged everyone to plan ahead for the upcoming summer, the last summer before high school graduation. She mentioned the Stones and Bones summer program Gabe attended and encouraged everyone to do something meaningful over the summer.

Third, the world does not revolve around school. Maggie ended her speech with a reminder that while students are experiencing lots of stress and deadlines right now, high school is only going to be a short experience in life. She shared her view that the ultimate purpose of high school isn’t to accomplish short-term tasks in the classroom but to take whatever you learn within campus beyond the classroom and out into society. She mentioned that Gabe not only learned about fossils, but actually went into the field to find one himself and actively contributed to the field of science he was interested in.

She concluded her speech with a final call for her peers to find their motivation, and actively chase after what drives them to come to school every day.

(Written by Maggie Jiang Pictures by Julile Takabe Edited and supervised by Cheer Zhang)