Cereal mascots, quantum computers and race car driving. All exceptionally interesting topics, but they are not taught under common school curriculum. However, freshmen, sophomores and juniors were thoroughly educated about these topics, and many more, during the long-awaited Dragon Talks on Friday, June 2.

Dragon Talks is an annual senior project where the participants formulate their speech based on their academic passions and personal stories.

The structure of the project is an imitation of TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Talks, which is an organization that is devoted to cultivate creativity and spread ideas via  concise, motivational speeches.

For the preliminary round, seniors were selected to perform their speech in various classrooms, with up to ten seniors per classroom. After the students concluded, the students in that class voted for the two best presenters. The two who were selected continued to the final round, where they presented again in a different classrooms; students, along with adjudicators, voted for whose speech they thought was best.

WATCH THE 25 WINNERS HERE

Although seniors are glad the speeches are over, many enjoyed this experience.

“I really enjoyed getting to give my Dragon Talk in front of a class, and I enjoyed getting to listen to what other people had to say,” Jonah Bufford ‘17 said. “I feel like it’s a good way to end off the year, letting everyone give a talk on whatever they want to talk about.”

“[Seniors] have developed interests that they would not have had as ninth graders,” history teacher Cherie Eulau said. “I like that it’s sort of this ‘rite of passage’ at Foothill.”

The essential goal of the Dragon Talks was to provoke and cultivate student passions, but also to explore a wide range of topics that are not normally covered under a standard academic curriculum.

“I had such a wide variety this year, […] and even my last two were diametrically different and both dynamite,”Eulau said.