Michael+K’s+Final+AmEx+2013+Speech

="Pursuit of Happiness"=

=Text of Speech= Stress is a silent killer. I feel like as teenagers at Foothill we seem to stress about everything and brag about how stressed we are. But why are we always stressed? Is it because Mr. Geib expects us to remember something he mentioned in September for like a millisecond, no this can't be it. Could it be that Mrs.Anderson's practicals are satin ? I truly believe we are always stressed, because in our current society if you are not educated you mind as well start cleaning toilets at Jack n The Box and this stresses us out. It becomes very apparent through the majority of high school students in 2013 that college= money and money equals happiness. While I do find that having a good education can be beneficial in many aspects of life, the money that follows is not happiness. I'm sick and tired of hearing people at school talk about how they want to be a lawyer, a doctor, or any high paying job just because the money they'll be making. As they say in step brothers," I wanna make bank bro, I wanna get ass and drive a Range Rover". Whatever happened to the childhood dreams of being a firefighter, because it made you happy? Is it all about money now a days? Of course you need a steady income to strive as a successful citizen in America but this does not mean you need to sell your soul, drive nice cars, wear clothes that are 900 dollars that were probably made in a sweat shop for 8 cents just to show your peers that you are a success. My whole life I have been brainwashed to think that being rich is way to live, especially when I was a little kid and moms dad would drive up in a Mercedes Gull Wing, for those who don't know cars that car is 250,000 car. He would always tell me that if I stayed in school and took all the hard classes and had no social life it would all pay off, but I'm sorry to say it gramps but you're an old fart, and I'm going to have to go the other way. If it was up to me all I need in life is a small house, my dog, my truck and my surfboard.

We all have dealt with stress at some point in our lives. The most prevalent case of stress I witness on a daily basis is my father. He is the boss of his own helicopter engineering business. Everyday he comes home pissed off because his job is stressful, which in turn makes my life a living hell. He is a miserable man and it is apparent from his facial expressions. But why would someone but up with this stress on a daily basis when it is clearly ruining his life before his eyes? Money. He has a mortgage to pay and children to feed, and I admire my dad in this sense that he works his ass off to give me the financial life I have. But to be truthfully honest, I'd rather be dirt poor, and have a dad that I can actually talk to and see for more than 20 minutes a day. Money isn't everything to me I guess. I find money to be almost a burden to our society, because think of it from a logical point of view its a green freaking piece of paper that basically enslaves you just to acquire it. I want to be able in the future to come home from work go surf with my sons and put everything at work behind me, instead of letting the stress and constant want of money overcome me. But who am I to judge if you want to live in a gigantic house and live with money always on your mind, do you homie! But in my opinion I would rather be happy and poor than rich and miserable.A good example of this is, the people that win the lottery their lives progressively get worse after winning. All of their so called friends start hitting them up for dough, and you start to see the greed us Americans have. But why do we feel the need to wear 60 Diamond shirts, when you can go to Ross and pop tags for like 40 dollars? As Americans, we are programmed from our first steps that to be happy is to be successful. BULLSHIT! To be happy you have to be truly content about your life, not content because you fill right into society's niche of "happy".

Junior Year has taught me a lot about myself, before last year I was so caught up in being exactly what society wanted me to be as Foothill Student, Go to Stanford, become a lawyer and swim in pools of money and stress. Now though I truly see that I literally give two craps about being rich, and being stressed due to the greed fro money, instead I want to just live a financially steady mellow life, and be happy. I'm not saying don't go to college and get an education I'm just saying do what feels right to you. I will attend college just because I don't mind school that much when it's actually interesting things and not topics like the history of light bulbs. Plus we all know that with a college degree getting a medium paying job in life is much easier

In the America, I grow up in I would like to see the status quo to switch from the Pursuit of Money, to the Pursuit of Happiness. =Cite Your Sources= -My Life