On January 26th, Dublin High had 2 assemblies. The juniors and seniors had an assembly on the proper uses and and dangers of social media. The freshmen and sophomores had an assembly by a motivational speaker on how he lived his high school life and how we should live it as well. Since the lower class and upper class student went to different meetings, this article can help elaborate on what was discussed on each assembly.

Freshman/Sophomore Assembly: Motivational Speaker

The motivational speaker for lower class students was Mike Smith, who grew up in Nebraska and how he had grown up as a man from a scrawny kid to an annoying jock and finally into a great person that made friends with many people. He spoke about his childhood, where he used to live in a tough neighborhood, but later, he finally moved to a very small town in Nebraska. He always tried to act cool during his first years there, but he was always an invisible kid, yet later on, he became taller, got into varsity, football, basketball, and many other sports, and had many scholarships. But it came to the point where he was a demeaning jerk to many of his lower counterparts. Until finally, he decided to do something about it after he found out his father had cancer and he realized how his parents would definitely not be proud of him. He tried to befriend a young high schooler named Calvin, who always came early to school because of his parents, and after a lot of coaxing and struggle, he finally relented, and they became the best of friends, and his other football friends were confused, but later understood the friendship. Today, he owns two non-profit companies and a beanie brand, because he loves to skate, and plans on making a skateboarding school. For more information on Mike Smith, click here to see everything about him: http://mikesmithlive.com/full-bio/

Many DHS students loved his overall speech because of his genuine honesty and comedy which he incorporated into his talk very strongly. Sophomore Brian Kim said with respect, “This is probably the coolest skater I’ve ever met,” and many others agreed to him. His tale was rather insightful into how we should live our high school lives and not squander it by focusing on popularity, social media, and the number of friends you have and parties you go to.

Junior/Senior Assembly: How to Use Media and Its Dangers

This assembly was about using social media as a tool and learning how to use that tool positively. The assembly was led by a woman who worked with a positive sports group. Her profession was public speaking. While the lessons were useful in general, to a slight majority of the high junior and seniors, what she said seemed to already be general knowledge to the students.

That being said, the examples the speaker used, such as a basketball player who lost his “athlete of the year” award due to trash talking another team over Twitter really drove home on how much damage a single “mistake” on social media post could cause. Her examples showed just how strong the media can influence your future. And did you know that for many colleges, when looking at different incoming freshmen or high school seniors applying to their college, they have departments that are solely meant to find and see your social media, in order to find what kinds of content you post, reply or text. This explains the necessity of the talk on media, which helps us make better decisions in the future.