Special Forum Inspires WHS Students

Lessons from worms, engineering and the writing process will inspire Westborough High School students to cook at home this Saturday for Rachel’s Table, toward fighting hunger locally.

And to clean up trash in Westborough during an Earth Day event on April 22.

Two prominent local scientists and an author shared their inspirations during a special event in the Westborough High School lobby last Thursday night.

The first TEDx Youth Forum at WHS also featured several videos of TEDTalks. TED’s mission is “ideas worth spreading,” according to the organization’s website.

WHS seniors Mark Aronson and Jamie Cerny organized last Thursday night’s event.

"We are young. We're new to this world. And we have unlimited potential that just needs to be ignited,” Aronson said.

The local speakers were: Dr. Craig Mello, professor of molecular biology medicine at University of Massachusetts Medical School, and a Nobel Prize winner for medicine; Ken Stafford, associate director of robotics engineering at WPI; and author Andrew Clements.

Mello discussed  “what really gets me excited about science.”

He works on worms, and said his talk’s subtitle was "How a worm might just save your life."
"Worms are an incredibly cool organism. They are really super good at being a worm," Mello said.
"Science isn't about demystifying the world. It's essentially about enjoying it and exploring the mystery of the world.”
Stafford reflected on what excited him in high school.
"I've got to tell you: I wasn't nearly as cool as you guys are,” said Stafford, adding that he was known as a science whiz back then.

"Something happened between being a science whiz and a hands-on engineer that really turned me around.”

Clements discussed how he became an author, and his writing and publishing processes.

"The difference between writing that is okay and writing that is very good is very small. There are very small, fine adjustments,” he said.

“If you don't take the time to look for the small adjustments, you will never know what the small adjustments are, and your writing will be okay but it will never really jump off the page."

Cerny said she and Aronson discussed TED talks numerous times last year. At the end of their junior year, she thought "maybe we could have our own TED talk.”
Aronson said that last June, they went to TEDx Boston and watched "how a TEDx is run behind the scenes.” They then spent the summer planned last Thursday’s event, and assembled an organizing team last fall.
"When thinking about this, we realized that the real problem of trying to change the world as high schoolers is that we're high schoolers,” Aronson said.

“To have beautiful ideas, we first must believe ourselves are beautiful.”