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Your coordinates are your lottery ticket in life, says Aurora student

February 27, 2020   ·   0 Comments

Shyam Subramanyam wasn’t expecting to find himself looking over a sea of raised hands when he asked the crowd how many had ever purchased a lottery ticket.

A student at Newmarket’s Pickering College, the Aurora resident expected to be standing in front of a younger audience – a group not yet old enough to know the feeling of a Lottomax ticket burning a hole in their pocket.

But his audience transcended age and background – as did the reason he stood before them.

“The idea I am here to present today is the mind-blowing idea that everyone in this room has a lottery ticket, whether they know it or not,” he said.

The ticket he spoke of was not a piece of paper with a series of numbers printed on the back; rather, a set of digits that stick with us through our entire lives – the coordinates of where each and every one of us is born.

“If you look at my coordinates, we need to start with my parents,” Shyam continued. “They started off in India and they moved to America where I joined them on my journey, and now we’re here at Pickering College. To understand why your coordinates are your lottery ticket, why they are so important, we need to break it down. Primarily, your coordinates set up the course of your life. Your coordinates determine the society you will be placed in as well as the people you will be surrounded with, as well as the school you’ll go to. So much of your life is determined by coordinates.”

Fellow student Yagmur Ozturk, Grade 12, also understands the importance of one’s coordinates.

As part of her final Capstone Project, a signature of Pickering College’s Global Leadership Program, Yagmur convened eight of her peers to participate in the school’s first-ever TEDx event with an aim of fostering freedom of speech and giving a voice to young people.

“Growing up in Turkey, I am critical of silencing voices, which is why I wanted my Capstone Project to focus on giving a voice to young people,” she said. “We have a very diverse student body at Pickering College, therefore I believe that our TEDx conference will allow our audience to understand different perspectives.”

The student-run TEDx conference featured eight students from Grades 9 through 12 each of whom brought forward a message they believed was worth sharing, ranging from body acceptance through the positive aspects of nuclear power.

“I hope in the spirit of ideas worth spreading, you will get a glimpse of different perspectives our speakers are going to share about issues they feel are significant,” Yagmur told the audience.

In this spirit, Shyam took the audience on a very personal journey.

“How lucky we are to be sitting in this room, to be with a loving family, lucky to be alive and be thankful for our lives,” he said, before contrasting the life his coordinates have afforded him versus the life led by Gift, a student in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“Gift is a 14-year-old South Sudanese boy who actually had to flee to the Democratic Republic of Congo due to war threats at his home country and after all that, he learned French, he studied alone, he invented his own solar powered lamp to study in the night, and he has been at the top of his class for the past three years since Grade 5,” said Shyam, sharing with the audience Gift’s ambition to become a teacher. “The sad thing is this might not be enough for Gift’s future. In Gift’s home country of Sudan, there are only 120 secondary schools, whereas in Ontario alone there are 900. Just for size, Sudan is almost two times the size of Ontario yet Ontario has eight times the amount of secondary schools. It is absolutely astonishing when you take a look at the numbers.

“Then you have my story: a 14-year-old boy who has the privilege to attend primary and secondary school without the concern of war looming over my head. The only concern being when I can hang out with my friends again. I think the only difference between me and Gift, another ambitious being, are our coordinates. You can only imagine how different Gift’s life would be if he was born in Canada.”

As a student, Shyam says he often studies statistics and, as a consequence, inequalities.

“Behind every number there is a face, a story, a kid that can be younger than my age, living in these traumatic experiences and living out these treacherous and dangerous adventures,” he concluded. That’s when it truly came [to me] how lucky I am: lucky my parents chose to immigrate, lucky my parents got selected for a visa, and lucky I live in a land where opportunities are littered like plastic in the ocean. It is absolutely astonishing how much of your life is determined simply by coordinates of where you’re born.

“The greatest realization to me is I have the ability, the opportunity to be standing up here giving a TED talk, standing up here giving a TED talk for an idea I feel is worth spreading. Your geographical luck, your coordinates, they determine so much of your life, not only do they set the stage for your life, but they also set the glass ceiling. You have your lottery tickets. All I can say is I wish you spend your winnings wisely.”

By Brock Weir



         

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