coming clean about my 💩y TEDx talk

It was one of the first things that I ever put on my bucket list - give a TED talk.

My motivation initially came from the influence that a number of TED talks had on me in early adulthood, but beyond that, an understandably naïve belief that my experiences and perspectives were unique; that I had the potential to positively inspire and influence others.

The opportunity came to me much earlier than I could have imagined. On the verge of turning 25, my alma mater, Beloit College, opened up applications for an inaugural TEDx that they were hosting, thanks to some students taking the initiative to launch and lead it. 

Consequently, I was two years removed from an incidental felony charge that drastically altered the course of my life, and a year into what has since become my path towards reconciling my privileges, hardships and traumas into a life dedicated to and fulfilled by building community with and for others. I felt that, within all of that abrupt and highly-concentrated change, I could synthesize something worth sharing with the world.

After much procrastination and reckoning with my unresolved and evolving experience, I filled out the Google Form and submitted my application. A couple weeks later, I received the email below, confirming the acceptance of my proposed talk, Revitalizing Self and City, which would be an attempt to harmonize my path towards personal redemption with Detroit's recovery from bankruptcy. I was living in Detroit and dedicating myself to that effort by supporting community and economic development there, while simultaneously trying to heal myself at the time.

An overwhelming anxiety set-in shortly thereafter as I realized the task laid before me.

The email notifying me that my proposal had been accepted.

Despite being an outgoing person and effective communicator, public speaking is something that actually causes me considerable distress. 

There's something about the expectations placed upon it; the uncertainty of how it will be perceived by audiences; and the insecurity that comes in not knowing how it will all turn out that inhibits me.

As I went through the process of preparing for my talk, this burden compounded and spiraled inside me. I had never done something like this before. I had led meetings, spoken at community events and in discussion-oriented classrooms, and even given orientations on stages to large groups, but I had never presented and bore an extremely vulnerable version of myself for an audience, for the world to receive.

Being the opportunist that I am, I had also managed to immediately precede my talk in Beloit - located in southern Wisconsin - with a two-week commitment as a camp counselor in southern Maine. The camp, The Main Idea at Camp Walden, played a pivotal role in my story, as the camp's director, Dawn, was the first person to trust and hire me after my felony charge, when I responded to a Craigslist listing she had posted.

She had planted the seed that grew into the renewed sense of self-worth I have today, and for that I will always be grateful. The camp primarily serves girls from low-income backgrounds - many of whom come from homes and communities affected by a number of disparities - and the camp is meant to offer them two weeks of solace, safety and belonging. It felt like a poetic gesture to pursue and honor both commitments.

Logistics what they were, I planned to drive cross-country between the two points in two days, arriving in Wisconsin the evening before my talk. Oh, and I also planned to memorize my entire 18 minute speech by listening to a recording of myself reciting it repeatedly throughout the 18 hour drive... and that was a hard way to figure out that I am not much of an auditory learner.

Along the way to Beloit I would even pass through the small Massachusetts town where I was arrested and charged with my felony.

Arriving after dark on the evening of August 24th, I felt incredibly unprepared, trying to memorize my unrefined and over-saturated speech word-for-word proved to be a fool’s errand. TED provided all speakers with a brief guide for preparing our presentations, which was helpful, but unsupported. I had even gleaned inspiration from JD Schramm’s opening to his TED Talk on surviving suicide and Will Stephen’s TEDx parody of a foolproof inspirational Talk.

But unfortunately, I had yet to learn about and, more importantly, trust the invaluable role of peer support, review, feedback, and iteration. Realistically, my speech had only existed in the space between my mind, the Google Doc I composed it in, and the recording I tried to memorize it through. The vortex that created internally became burdensome and all consuming. It would show when I reached the stage.

The day arrived and quickly turned to evening. 

A mix of students, faculty and alumni, and the speakers convened in Mayer Hall, an orientation to the event was given, and then we set ourselves to milling about different corners of the building to make final preparations for our respective talks. I chose a medium size lecture room upstairs, complete with overlapping mid-century chalkboards and a massive epoxy resin centerpiece that were indicators of Mayer's past life as our science center.

As a bit of unfortunate foreshadowing to the day's pitfalls, my last name on my name tag was misspelled, reading "Andjeski"; I still wore it proudly.

My former teammate, friend, and fellow Beloiter, Nate, who had originally shared the opportunity with me, had his proposal accepted as well (contrary to mine, his TEDx was deliberate, concise and still supplements curricula on pedagogically relevant hip-hop today). A few weeks prior to the event, the order of presenters was released - he would open the night, and I would close it. Upon arriving that day, I placed the unnecessary expectations of headlining the event on myself; my nerves quickly began to unravel, and I spent most of my preparation time nervously pacing and taking deep, collective breaths upstairs and backstage.

My turn eventually came, and, as I stepped on stage to the applause of a supportive and eager crowd of over 100 people, the lights blinded me, the faces blurred, and whatever composure I had quickly dwindled. Fortunately, the opening to my talk was something that I had thoroughly memorized, as it was the detailed story of the night that drunkenly spiraled into an unwarranted felony charge and the life-changing repercussions. The belligerent argument with my AmeriCorps peer on our walk home; the puke covered t-shirt and boxers I wore while my Miranda Rights were being read to me; the shackled and handcuffed walk of shame into the courtroom the next morning all flowed freely and clearly from my lips and mouth. 

But as I transitioned to my broader presentation, the first stumble came, and then the next, and so on. Nearly eight years later, I can still retrace most every mistake I made during my remaining 15 minutes on that stage. The series of items that I listed as “A)” then “2)”; the fumbling through my shoddily designed and incohesive slide deck; the moment that I froze on stage, feebly walked over to a side table to pick up and grasp the simple, cardboard notebook that I had scribbled a one-word outline into minutes before taking the stage all still haunt me in a way.

More thematically (and ironically), I look back at the audacity and callousness that one of my central tenets of the talk was that “all loss is opportunity” in relation to recovering from hardship and trauma, or the fact that I had not fact-checked my information about how long Jeannette had been running Detroit Experience Factory; the list goes on.

Altogether, I regretfully didn't have the words to communicate my experience, understanding and intentions yet, and all I had to show for it was an eighteen minute outpouring of incomplete, meandering and at times incoherent personal reflection - that has about thirteen hundred views on YouTube today

The box on my bucket list was checked.

That misspelled name tag still proudly hangs in my bedroom today.

It dangles from a golden yellow, felt fabric banner of Desiderata that I took off the wall of my grandma's bathroom about the same time that I delivered my talk in 2015. You can usually see it peeking over my left shoulder when I’m taking video calls from home. That banner (and its ornaments) might be my single most important personal memento because I recited the poem at my grandmother’s funeral last year, there is a tattoo on my body inspired by it, and so many bits and pieces of myself hang and dangle from it.

Truthfully, I’ve been drafting this blog for a while - probably too long - in an attempt to reconcile my desire to be proud of the accomplishment, yet hold myself accountable for falling short of giving the TEDx talk that the perspectives I was representing deserved. Eventually, I realized this is a difficult, yet necessary step towards clearly and confidently telling my own story in order to better support others as they tell their own.

Earlier this year, I ran into a local friend in Chattanooga - my past coed kickball captain, Justin - at an improv comedy show in town. We hadn’t seen each other in a number of months, since last summer even, and within minutes of catching up, he shared the unsolicited insight that he had watched my TEDx. Especially with this reflection fresh on my mind, it only took a few moments for me to start elaborating on all the ways that it sucked; he quickly pushed back, sharing that he had no idea about the experiences I had gone through to make me who I am, and that he was grateful to have the opportunity to do so, stating, “You know, you don’t really know people even though you might spend time with them.”

Today, I am much further down the path of my journey as someone who finds redemption and fulfillment through building, supporting and facilitating community for others. I'm also much better at communicating why I do it and what it means for me to be able to do so.

I know that sometime soon, I will present my TEDx story for the world to hear again (except this time I'll fact check, peer review and do all of those other things I neglected to do the first go around). It was a privilege, in a number of ways, to be able to give an inaccurate and illogical TEDx talk; it's also a privilege to be able to continue living and refining my story so that it may benefit others.

Here’s to being your own biggest critic, to making an unknown impact on people’s lives, and to checking items off your bucket list.