“Listen to your elders,” they say; but what happens when one opens their ears to a much younger voice?

Senior Alea Grundler centered her Dragon Talk around the important lessons one can learn from kids and how these lessons can be applied to everyday life.

“We can take the way that they live and the conviction that they have and the love they give out and the confidence that goes in,” she said. “We can take that and learn from kids and apply it to our lives so that we can live with confidence and we can love.”

Grundler has a love for the young; she dedicates her time to tutoring, teaching Sunday school, and volunteering at summer camps. She began to notice their behavior, and how different it is from society’s conventions.

“Why do they have this exuberance for life? Why don’t I have it? What can I do to make up that difference? What can I do to have that?” she said.

Grundler tried to apply this kid mentality to her everyday life, and found it challenging.

“I spent this entire year trying to be like a kid, trying to see what they had and trying to apply it to my life, and then it was extraordinarily difficult,” she said. “It’s pretty hard to live like a kid because life gets in the way.”

Grundler wants people to stop brushing kids aside. She feels that kids offer important lessons that people should learn.

“It’s not just older people that you can learn from,” she explained.

She feels that society dictates what people have to do, or what they’re supposed to be like, and that this weighs them down.

“Going to college, living a life that’s very adult,” she said, “If you keep that childlike exuberance in you, you can just live a fun life and be happy.”