Life throws struggles and pains at you, but what defines who you are is how you respond to it; that was the day that my friend died. I would dedicate the next 365 days of my life to my Eagle Scout project, building giant simple machines for a local elementary school in honor of his memory. During this time, I found a new passion of mine, content creation and eventually podcasting.I am John-Paul Speight, a 22-year-old from Houston, TX., majoring in multimedia journalism at the University of Arkansas. Since 2020, I have produced multiple podcast episodes, learned to write episode scripts, scheduled collaboration efforts, and edited my projects with professional software such as Pro Tools and DaVinci Resolve.In this, I have honed my communication, creativity, and critical thinking skills. When communicating with people, I have learned how to listen to others fully and to have deeper dialogues. When there is any problem that is needed to be solved, I can look at the bigger picture, and use critical thinking to find logical solutions and what is needed to be done. In a world deprived of creative freedom, I have used it to create new stories, such as with my podcast, or to tell old ones so that the memories of people like my friend are not forgotten. Life threw boulders at me, and I turned them into hope.
