{"id":26061,"date":"2020-02-27T23:14:42","date_gmt":"2020-02-28T04:14:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=26061"},"modified":"2020-02-27T23:14:51","modified_gmt":"2020-02-28T04:14:51","slug":"your-coordinates-are-your-lottery-ticket-in-life-says-aurora-student","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/your-coordinates-are-your-lottery-ticket-in-life-says-aurora-student\/","title":{"rendered":"Your coordinates are your lottery ticket in life, says Aurora student"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Shyam Subramanyam wasn\u2019t expecting to find himself\nlooking over a sea of raised hands when he asked the crowd how many had ever\npurchased a lottery ticket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A student at Newmarket\u2019s Pickering College, the Aurora\nresident expected to be standing in front of a younger audience \u2013 a group not\nyet old enough to know the feeling of a Lottomax ticket burning a hole in their\npocket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But his audience transcended age and background \u2013 as did\nthe reason he stood before them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe idea I am here to present today is the mind-blowing\nidea that everyone in this room has a lottery ticket, whether they know it or\nnot,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ticket he spoke of was not a piece of paper with a\nseries of numbers printed on the back; rather, a set of digits that stick with\nus through our entire lives \u2013 the coordinates of where each and every one of us\nis born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you look at my coordinates, we need to start with my\nparents,\u201d Shyam continued. \u201cThey started off in India and they moved to America\nwhere I joined them on my journey, and now we\u2019re here at Pickering College. To\nunderstand why your coordinates are your lottery ticket, why they are so\nimportant, we need to break it down. Primarily, your coordinates set up the\ncourse of your life. Your coordinates determine the society you will be placed\nin as well as the people you will be surrounded with, as well as the school\nyou\u2019ll go to. So much of your life is determined by coordinates.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fellow student Yagmur Ozturk, Grade 12, also understands\nthe importance of one\u2019s coordinates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of her final Capstone Project, a signature of\nPickering College\u2019s Global Leadership Program, Yagmur convened eight of her\npeers to participate in the school\u2019s first-ever TEDx event with an aim of\nfostering freedom of speech and giving a voice to young people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGrowing up in Turkey, I am critical of silencing voices,\nwhich is why I wanted my Capstone Project to focus on giving a voice to young\npeople,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have a very diverse student body at Pickering College,\ntherefore I believe that our TEDx conference will allow our audience to\nunderstand different perspectives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The student-run TEDx conference featured eight students\nfrom Grades 9 through 12 each of whom brought forward a message they believed\nwas worth sharing, ranging from body acceptance through the positive aspects of\nnuclear power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI hope in the spirit of ideas worth spreading, you will\nget a glimpse of different perspectives our speakers are going to share about\nissues they feel are significant,\u201d Yagmur told the audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this spirit, Shyam took the audience on a very\npersonal journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow lucky we are to be sitting in this room, to be with\na loving family, lucky to be alive and be thankful for our lives,\u201d he said,\nbefore contrasting the life his coordinates have afforded him versus the life\nled by Gift, a student in the Democratic Republic of Congo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGift is a 14-year-old South Sudanese boy who actually\nhad to flee to the Democratic Republic of Congo due to war threats at his home\ncountry and after all that, he learned French, he studied alone, he invented\nhis own solar powered lamp to study in the night, and he has been at the top of\nhis class for the past three years since Grade 5,\u201d said Shyam, sharing with the\naudience Gift\u2019s ambition to become a teacher. \u201cThe sad thing is this might not\nbe enough for Gift\u2019s future. In Gift\u2019s home country of Sudan, there are only\n120 secondary schools, whereas in Ontario alone there are 900. Just for size, Sudan\nis almost two times the size of Ontario yet Ontario has eight times the amount\nof secondary schools. It is absolutely astonishing when you take a look at the\nnumbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen you have my story: a 14-year-old boy who has the\nprivilege to attend primary and secondary school without the concern of war\nlooming over my head. The only concern being when I can hang out with my\nfriends again. I think the only difference between me and Gift, another\nambitious being, are our coordinates. You can only imagine how different Gift\u2019s\nlife would be if he was born in Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a student, Shyam says he often studies statistics and,\nas a consequence, inequalities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBehind every number there is a face, a story, a kid that\ncan be younger than my age, living in these traumatic experiences and living\nout these treacherous and dangerous adventures,\u201d he concluded. That\u2019s when it\ntruly came [to me] how lucky I am: lucky my parents chose to immigrate, lucky\nmy parents got selected for a visa, and lucky I live in a land where opportunities\nare littered like plastic in the ocean. It is absolutely astonishing how much\nof your life is determined simply by coordinates of where you\u2019re born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir <\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shyam Subramanyam wasn\u2019t 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\u2019s Pickering College, the Aurora resident expected to be standing in front of a younger audience \u2013 a group not yet old enough to know […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26046,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/2020-02-27-05.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6Ml","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-21 13:11:38","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}