As a young child, I never understood why adults became so worried and told me not to get too stressed over school when I told them I’d be attending Gunn. Whatever, I usually just shrugged it off. This was until I grew older and overheard from parental conversations that my future high school had a past history of youth suicides. I became increasingly concerned about attending high school. What if I spent my next four years being constantly worried about the well-being of my friends?
To my surprise, however, my freshman year here at Gunn, when I entered in the fall of 2016, went quite smoothly. It seemed as if the fact that there had been previous student suicides didn’t exist. I thought that the walls would be plastered with posters containing suicide or mental health hotline numbers, but instead, they were your typical high school advertisements for upcoming dances or clubs recruiting members. From the outside, it seemed as if the student community believed that mental health issues were a thing of the past, and eventually, even I let myself believe that this was true.
So, you could say that my freshman year of high school played out normally. The concerns and biases I previously held melted away, and from then on, anytime an adult would try to have the conversation with me, I became agitated and brushed them off, telling them it was no longer an issue they needed to be worried about. But of course, it always hits you the hardest when you least expect it.
Some of you might remember the day I’m about to talk about. For me, it’s a day that forever changed my outlook and approach to mental health—the second day of my sophomore year. I have PE, and all the classes are piled together in the gym, and everyone’s catching up with each other after the summer break. No one, myself included, is paying much attention to what my teacher is saying. That is until the words, “Senior at Gunn High School suicide this morning, and there is help when you need it,” fill the room, clashing with conversations about new teachers and classes. It’s like a wave of silence drowns the room, yet as fast as the tide came in, it recedes just as quickly, taking the silence with it. Conversations about vacation and video games pick up right where they left off just minutes ago. If you had walked into that room at that very moment, you would have never been able to guess that the suicide of a Gunn High School senior was just announced to this mass of students.
Needless to say, for the next few days, which then turned into weeks, which then turned into months, I remained completely and utterly shocked by the fact that from the outside, it seemed as if everyone in my PE class that day had just moved on so quickly. I realized how naive I’d been the entire time. It wasn’t that the problem of mental health didn’t exist anymore; warning signs had always been there, signs of something brewing beneath the surface. I suddenly remembered each time a fellow student would bring up the topic of student suicide, and how others around them would first glance around nervously, then quickly change the topic of conversation. I remembered how our school had a Wellness Center, and I was enrolled in what we then called “Tiny Connect,” a program for emotional support. However, students weren’t utilizing these resources to their full potential. Students didn’t know the correct ways to cope with personal situations, and doing nothing is always the easiest solution.
I had the same attitude of inaction my freshman year. There was not much left for the school to do in order to solve the problem; the students had to first realize that there was one.
The next school year rolls around where I meet Hannah and Vardhan and Bean, which is a business class on campus for a group project. We’re told to create a mock startup together, to create a product or service to solve a problem, any problem we saw in our community. I remember the brainstorming sessions we had where we tossed out a bunch of random ideas. However, nothing we came up with really stuck. Although we were just designing a small school project, I think secretly, the three of us wanted to create something that would actually make a difference.
With the project proposal deadlines quickly approaching, the three of us still didn’t have any idea of what we wanted to create. This was when one day, Hannah said, “Guys, why don’t we just make a podcast?” I remember the three of us kind of looking around at each other, then agreeing that making a podcast was actually plausible. It was nothing as complicated as needing to manufacture a product. But then came the new question of what this podcast to be about.
For those of you who don’t know, a podcast is a platform for sharing ideas and thoughts. This was an opportunity for us to say something, to make a difference, to possibly even solve a problem. Of course, at that moment, I remembered my second day of sophomore year. To me, what was most important was addressing student awareness of mental health in this community.
I also remembered a TEDx speech by David Phillips I’d once watched, called “The Magical Science of Storytelling.” The general gist is that storytelling is the most effective way to capture an audience’s attention. It’s because everyone grows up on stories, grows up hearing the words “Once Upon a Time.” No matter the language, people form emotional connections with stories, and that’s why they’re so effective.
So, the idea of a podcast about mental health was created, and we decided to run with it. Together with storytelling in mind, Hannah, Vardhan, and I formed the mock startup company “Project Oyster,” a podcast for high schoolers, created by high schoolers. The name stems from how we believe that everyone has a story inside of them to share, just like how each oyster contains a hidden pearl.
Although our original goal was to have guest speakers come on and share their mental health journeys with us, we were scared of being stigmatized and what the reaction of the public would be. So, we actually began our podcast featuring speakers who just told relatable stories about growing up. For example, our first pilot episode, which we actually had to turn in as a prototype for a business class, featured a student talking about family embarrassment.
To our surprise, Project Oyster quickly became much more than just another school project. When we began transitioning our episodes to be more mental health-focused, contrary to our original belief, instead of losing listeners, the number of plays spiked on episodes where the speaker talked about more personal subjects. After releasing our third episode featuring then-senior Jimmy Farley, who spoke about his battles with depression, we got tons of thank-you messages from people telling us how listening to that episode helped them
realize that they weren’t alone, especially since it’s easy to feel isolated in a competitive environment. Jimmy’s words also helped people to realize that they needed help or gave them the courage they needed to reach out to others, to possibly even share their own stories.
It was then that Hannah, Vardhan, and I realized that what we were doing, something as simple as recording a conversation in the Gunn library, then posting it online, was starting a conversation and making a difference in people’s lives. Since then, our small school project has turned into something much larger and much more real.
Among subsequent episodes, one featured then-senior Anna, who dealt with years of grief following the loss of her mother to breast cancer. She shared with me, “My mother’s passing informs parts of myself rather than defines who I am,” and advised others who may be going through similar situations, “You’ll reach the point where you’re okay. Everything you feel every day is valid. Just be patient with yourself.” Another one of my favorites was Joey’s episode, where despite struggling with the challenges faced by career athletes, he decided to come out to his hockey team. During our interview, he said that seeing role models who represent who you are is so important, and decided that it was his time to be that person for others.
Outside of the impact made by our episodes alone, Hannah, Vardhan, and I have also given presentations to city officials in order to offer student perspective on mental health, have teamed up with the local YMCA to lead team discussions on well-being, and have been featured on many local news outlets, including ABC 7 segment, “Building a Better Bay Area.” However, what’s more important to us than receiving any fame or recognition is getting a kind message from someone who tells us how listening to our episodes impacted them positively. “Listening to Project Oyster makes me feel less alone,” or “It’s so powerful to hear people’s stories.” These small comments remind us of why we started all this in the first place: to inspire and encourage those who feel vulnerable about their experiences to speak up.
Hannah, Vardhan, and I aren’t the real heroes of this story. The real heroes are those who put themselves out there, embrace the unknown through trusting in the positive of being able to help others. It could just be that I’m older now and know more people, or that I’ve surrounded myself with those who are passionate about the same things as myself, but I’d like to think that Project Oyster has at least played a small role in helping to destigmatize mental health in the student community here at Gunn. But just as importantly, Project Oyster has shown me that starting conversations is the first step towards creating effective change, and that lesson is what I’m here to share.
That it’s not always futile to challenge the existing belief. All you need to do is to share your ideas, just talk, to start conversations. But maybe you’re thinking, “It’s easy for you to say that. You’re giving a speech on stage about talking,” and I know that because I’m usually the one with those thoughts. I’m actually very much an introvert. In the past, a consequence of defining myself as an introvert is that I often let myself fall beneath the shadows of those who spoke up louder than I did. Subsequently, I believed that my ideas or what I had to say was never as important or valuable compared to my more outgoing peers.
On that note, you might not believe that I’m an introvert because everyone imagines speakers on stage to be charismatic or outgoing. But the fact that I am introverted was almost more of a reason for me to come here and speak today. I am an audience member. I love spending hours watching TED talk videos online. In the past, I often found myself thinking something along the lines of, “Wow, I love what they’re saying, but I could never do anything like that myself.”
One day, my friend recommended me to read this book called “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.” The author, Susan Cain, discusses the extrovert ideal America is built on and encourages introverts to speak up in their community. After reading “Quiet,” I gained an understanding regarding the importance of sharing perspectives from an introverted point of view. By nature, we’re not usually the ones who tell our stories, but sometimes the world needs to hear this perspective from those who are observers.
Speaking up takes strength. Introverts might just need a little extra push, and this book was that for me. It motivated me to step outside of comfort zones, out of the hopes of being able to help someone else, and gave me the courage I needed to be on this stage in front of you today. I truly believe that storytelling is for everyone, and introverts shouldn’t be excluded from that. For someone like myself, I found Project Oyster to be the perfect way to share my thoughts because having a one-on-one conversation with someone comes much more naturally to me than doing something like this, giving a speech on stage.
So, I know it’s scary to speak up. To be completely honest, I am terrified right now. I’m terrified because I’m stepping outside of my comfort zone, but also terrified because I came here and talked about mental health, a topic that is still considered to be stigmatized, even though there are so many people here in this school and in this community who worked so hard in their efforts to change that.
So, one could continue to say that’s easy for me to stand up here and lecture about sharing ideas or speaking up, but I’m also here to say that it really isn’t easy, and it probably never will be for me. It doesn’t matter if you’re giving a speech on stage or just having a conversation with close friends. Speaking up takes bravery. It’s much easier to shove your issues into a box in the corner, along with everyone else. But I’ve learned that there are consequences in doing so. On the other hand, speaking up gives you the power to unite people through common struggles, to make a difference through building stronger communities. Project Oyster has shown me that anyone can make that difference. It just takes one person and a little bit of courage.