Shark Tank Presentations

The Shark Tank process made me realize that although I'm passionate about our oceans and the conservation of the ecosystems they contain, it's not something I consider "personal". When I told my class that I plan on doing my project on mental illness, mainly in adolescents, everyone was really supportive and I received some very helpful feedback. The goal of my project is to not only take away some of the stigma that comes with mental illness, but also separate fact from fiction and provide people with different avenues to get help. One of my teachers suggested that I start within the school and build an awareness of my campaign and once the documentary I plan on making is finished, I could present it to the student body. I wasn't sure if that would be asking too much of the school but then I remembered how awesome I thought the "elephant in the room" campaign was. Every English teacher played the video for us to see and our counselors were there to talk to us about what the goals of the campaign and to make sure we all understood that their door is always open to us. Every student takes an English course every year. Because of this, everyone saw the video and listened to our counselors speak, whether they wanted to or not. I loved that because the whole point of the video was to spread awareness and educate people about mental illness and the stigma behind it, and a lot of times, the people that don't want to listen are the uneducated ones. When I agreed that presenting my documentary would be a good idea, a classmate of mine said that he didn't think it would be affective because it's like the saying "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink". I realized that some people might view it as I'm shoving all of this down their throat, even though that's obviously not my intention. This made me realize how much the campaign last year meant to me because someone was finally talking about mental illness. I'm not trying to make anyone come forward and say they suffer from depression and need help, I just want to put it out there for them to hear and let them know that they have options. My goals for the near future include finding a local organization help me with my campaign, finding some people that are willing to be in the documentary, and writing interview questions for those people.