Public Speaking

Since I was in early Junior High, I have always enjoyed public speaking. It's not something I am naturally good at or even something I always loved to do. In fact, when I went up in front of a class to give my first speech of my life, I broke out in a nervous sweat. My stomach began to churn, and I nearly lost my mind. However, the adrenaline rush I received from the horrible presentation was addicting.

Since this experience, I have began looking for opportunities to speak in public at any chance I received. Rather that was speaking at conferences or hosting Arkansas Razorback pep rallies this semester, I have been looking for opportunities to speak for quite some time. The photo seen below shows me right before the most recent pep rally two weeks ago, and the video shows me at a state conference during my senior year in high school. What you can't see in this video is the sweat under my shirt, the shaking of my feet, or the fact that I went completely blank on every word right as I stood up to grab the microphone. Although, once I began to speak my first word, it all came back to me as the adrenaline rushed to me head.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not an incredible speaker. I don't believe i'm naturally given some gift or that I will pursue a motivational speaking career. However, it is something I enjoy doing and that is the most valuable thing I have learned from this "hobby," so to speak. I find a sense of self gratification in speaking and enjoy finding something that scares me to death, then doing it. While this isn't an article on snowboarding, playing guitar, or riding a bike, public speaking is something I absolutely consider a hobby.

Spring Broke

I never had aspirations of being an NFL football player. In fact, when I was I suffered an injury to my lower back in Junior High Football, I immediately knew it was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I not only graced my coaches by taking up less space on the bench, but I had an excuse to tell girls for why I didn't play sports, too. Now, don't get me wrong. I love sports- I'm just really, really uncoordinated.

With this being said, snowboarding was always a tad different story for me. Again, I'm super uncoordinated, but this is something I had really strived for. I had been skiing with my family over 8 times by the time I was 16 and had really gotten to love it. I was no expert, but I enjoyed it a ton. I even loved to milk this excuse each time girls asked me if I played sports. My go to answer was something like, "Well, I got injured a few years back playing football so now I just snowboard." That's why when I went snowboarding my Sophomore year of High School on spring break with a group of home town friends, I knew I had to show out. All they had ever known was the unathletic me, and when it came time for a large group of us to set off through a terrain park in the mountains of Breckenridge, Colorado, I was the first to try and show off on the largest ramp- key word there is "try."

"You're gonna want to get this on camera" I arrogantly said to the girl I had a crush on in the group. While I had never actually landed any of the tail grabs, 360s, or backflips I claimed I had, that didn't cross my mind when I boldly took off towards the jump. I could see it up ahead with all of my friends anxiously waiting to the side as I came flying down the hill at top speed. I hit the ramp and immediately came to a profound realization: I had no idea what I was doing. In panic, I jumped as high as I could and reached for the back of the board like all the professionals did in the local gift shop posters. In the split second I reached backwards, I knew something was horribly wrong. For one, my board was already headed back down towards the icy ground. Second, in reaching back, I had shifted my momentum and sent the angle of my board at a near 90 degrees, straight toward the unforgiving ground below. I simultaneously screamed for my life and went straight into the mountain as the infamous picture seen below was taken. Needless to say, ski patrol took me down the mountain on a stretcher pulled by a snowmobile that day. I escaped with exactly one concussion, one broken collar bone, and zero dates with that girl.

Spring break? More like Spring Broke.

With the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery, everybody wins.

Name the most embarrassing moment of your life. This was the question I relentlessly struggled to answer for the first 20.85 years of my life. I think a lot of this rested in the fact that I had been made immune to this sort of thing. I have a pretty great knack for putting myself in humiliating situations and have built up a solid immunity to embarrassment as a result. No matter who, what, when, where or why, I could not be brought down- or so I thought.

In early September of this year I got a text message from one of the administrators I have a connection with in the Athletic department at the University of Arkansas. They wanted me to be in a commercial for the Arkansas Lottery Scholarship. They had intentions of airing it throughout TV stations in the state and playing it on the Jumbotron at the upcoming Football game. This was my big break. I put my Arkansas polo on, drank a fat cup of coffee and met up with the film crew for my close up. They began filming, and all was going according to plan. They had me answer several questions about what the scholarship had done to help me pay for college and had me repeat several generic tag lines such as "With the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery, everybody wins!"

Then, at the end of the interview, the head guy whipped out a camera. He asked me to smile in all sorts of different, uncomfortable poses- and I was ok with that. These were very normal pictures. Pictures one would often place on their Facebook profile. That is until he said, "jump." I responded, "no, thank you. I'm good smiling." Then, he explained, "I understand it's awkward and embarrassing, but I was instructed to have all students do a list of different poses. One on my list is you have to jump in the air, throw your arms up, kick your legs back and smile." After my pride was swallowed, they took the one picture before proceeding to take roughly 50 much more normal photographs.

When the Arkansas Razorbacks played Texas Tech this season in one of the most highly anticipated non-conference match ups our school has seen in years, the stadium was sold out with over 73,000 bystanders. It was all fun and games until my interview began to play. My friends around began to gasp in awh saying "That's you!", "That's so cool!", and "You're so lucky!"  My head began to grow. The attention was incredible and everything was going according to plan. Then, at the end of the video, they played a quick credit and flashed a photo on the screen. Before my eyes could even register the pixels, I heard the deafening laughter and my heart began to drop. The one photo, out of 75, that they decided to use was of my feet kicked behind my back, arms sprawled in the air, and face grinning on the massive screen. It was the jumping photo.

Since this day I have had the opportunity to meet several business executives in Northwest Arkansas, multiple high-up University administrators, and dozens of students on campus. Each time, without fail, they squint their eyes as I make my introduction. They usually tilt there head to the side and ponder for a moment before responding "I know you! You're the guy from the Jumbotron!"- but hey, with the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery, everybody wins. 

What A Pleasure To Feel Insignificant

In early January of 2015, my buddy Scott shot me a text saying "It's Christmas break. Let's get the guys together and go do something crazy." Within 4 hours of that text message, Scott and I were jumping in a Suburban with our good friends Travis and Justin, set on a path for the Grand Canyon. It was 9 O' Clock in the evening when we set out on the adventure, and the drive was estimated to take 17 hours- courtesy of google maps. The night was full of delirium and exhaustion, none of us that excited see a big hole in the ground. Nevertheless, 18 hours, 14 red bulls, and 4 tanks of gas later, we arrived at what proved to be the most incredible place any of us have ever been. 

Growing up I had always heard of the Grand Canyon. However, I had always come under the impression that if I wanted to see the real wonders of this world I would have to fly over seas to Stone Henge, the Great Pyramids, etc. Little did I know, the largest, most visited wonder of them all was lying a mear 1,000 miles down Interstate 40. The canyon is so deep that no matter where you stand, you can't even see the colorado river below; the hike is so long that signs posted all over the entrance to the canyon warn the impossibility of hiking to the bottom and back up in one day's span; and the hole is so wide that to drive a car around to the North side form the South, one would experience a completely different weather forecast and would enter a different state. This thing is huge, and I quickly learned that I, in turn, am very, very small.

So what's the real point of all this gloating? Prior to the spontaneous adventure, I had always believed in God based off of faith and what I had been taught alone. I had never witnessed a blind person see, seen gravity become defied, or wine miraculously turn into water, but the moment I stepped foot on the edge of the far South Rim of the Grand Canyon I knew there was someone above much greater than man. Someone with a hand mighty enough to carve out such an incredible landscape with the flick of the wrist. I realized in that initial moment what a tiny speck I was in such a massive universe- what a pleasure to feel insignificant.