I am going to introduce our speaker. I'm going to introduce him with the video that you see on the screen. But I would like to take just one minute to just say a few words about him. Our guest speaker today is Mr. Giovanni Douresseau. Did I say it right? I met him a month ago right before a mountain biking adventure. My friend who introduced Giovanni to our group told me that this is the first time that he's mountain biking. I was so happy to hear that because I am the slowest mountain biker in the school. I'm the one pushing my bike up. I'm the one who can't keep up with everybody. I'm the one who's scared to go downhill. But I still go because I think it's cool to say that, "Oh, I'm a mountain biker." He shows up and then he said that he has never done any mountain biking. I was so happy. I said, "Great, at least today I'm not the last person. There is somebody else who is going to be behind me." That was the case for the first hour and then he disappeared, which means that he took off and I'm still the last one on the trail. Also I think I got lost a little bit that day because everybody else was on one side of the mountain but I was so slow that I was on the other side. But I won't get to that. Please don't ask me any questions on that. Today we are very lucky to have Giovanni to talk to us. I am assuming that you have all watched the assignment that I give you, the video that I asked you to watch. We're going to watch this quick one and then you'll have an opportunity to ask him some questions. When we get to the Q&A, what I'm going to do is that I'm going to put this microphone here and I would really appreciate if you come and speak in the microphone so we can also record your voice. Students who have question, it would be great. This is this row so you guys are lucky. You can just grab the microphone. But please come here and grab the microphone. Without further ado, I am going to show this video and Giovanni is going to talk to us. The first time I surfed, I felt like I belonged. As a kid, you grew up in South Central, you're offered drugs before you even know how to add or subtract. One day, I went to A Place Called Home, it's a youth center. They had a surfing field trip. I looked at the flyer and looked at my skin and said, "People like me don't usually surf." We got through the parking lot and got to the sand and volunteers came rushing in to give us hugs. People that didn't look like me came over to give me love and affection. For the first time, a lot of us dropped our shoulders and felt as though we're being seen instead of just being watched. I found out that there's more experiences beyond the eight blocks of guns, gangs, and drugs. I started to care about school and I moved forward with purpose in life. Today I run a non-profit surfing program. I'm excited to find that next kid that wants to change the world. One of the reasons that it is so timely and so amazing to have Giovanni talk to us today is that you're going to find out in his talk that the topics that I showed you, the topics that we will be covering in Life 101, many of them will be introduced by Giovanni today. When you listen to him, you will see what I'm talking about. Thank you. Can everybody hear me? Good afternoon, everybody. It's a pleasure to be here with you all. I want to ask how many people did watch the recommended documentary film? Could we have a show of hands? Thank you guys. I'm more happy because it's one of the first few projects where my puppy actually got to be on camera. She's a model and a dog actor as well so it's a special proud dad moment for me. She's my first dog. From the documentary and also from this video, I want to ask a question and see, do you guys think that that media was the extrinsic motivational or was it the intrinsic one? By the show of hands, if anybody to answer that question. Which kind of motivation was that? [inaudible]. Right. What I want to do is break down the reasons why that was. To share a little bit more about my story, it's actually a really relevant time to talk about it and I'm so happy to talk about it with you guys and have a conversation because the same transition I went through when I was 12 with 300 pounds, I went through a mini version of that all of 2019. I'm excited to talk to you guys about it because I haven't really shared that with most people before. As you saw in the documentary, when I was 12, growing up, I was about 300 pounds. I didn't have a focus in life or motivation for education. Gang members around my house were my main mentors, they were my main role models and I could not see a life past my teens. If you asked me what my tour map was, I probably thought it was going to be less of a shoestring and more of a toothpick at that time. Growing up in South Central, there wasn't really much motivation to be successful in school or even the resources to do it. But I had a youth center that was right down the street called A Place Called Home. When I went there, there were new opportunities. There weren't people getting me, it wasn't allowed and you actually going there to do school work, finish up classes, and everything you need to do to be successful. They had a field trip to go surfing, I looked at my skin color and said, "People look like me don't surf, why should I go?" I doubted myself, but my friends were going, so I decide to do it anyway. When I got to the beach, and I saw all the volunteers' hugs, and they came off from different directions. It starts to make me think that there's actually people that can open up to and be vulnerable with. So I tried the surfing thing and when I went to first wave, it was a single most incredible moment of my life. Following that, we went to the end of the summer, and we were on the beach reflecting and talking about the fun summer that we had, so when it got to be my turn, I step like a rock and I told everybody, "This is the best summer of my life and I can't wait for the next one." When we finished, one of the volunteers came over and he said, "Do you really mean that? Do you want to really go surfing again?" I said, "Yeah, wish we're going surfing tomorrow." He signed up to become my mentor, and then he said the next time we'll go surfing is next Sunday at six in the morning. A week goes by, and it's Sunday, and it's 5:45. I heard some honking sounds outside of my mom's apartment, I looked down and I see this guy with blonde hair, a red pickup truck, and two surfboards in the back. He looks totally out of place. He was early, he was one of the first male role models I had in my life that showed up. He drove all the way from Malibu and drove past prostitutes, past people trying to sell him drugs at 5:45 in [inaudible] South Central, just to get me waves. That opened up my heart. We went surfing a few more times and he saw that since I was 300 pounds at the time, I could only do so much of surfing. I think this is the best I could do. Get to like a three-point football stance and fall off face first in the water. He gave me a challenge. My mentor said, "How about this, if you set a goal to lose 50 pounds in one year, I'm going to buy you a brand new surfboard, all the equipment, and everything that you need." I started to think, do I just want to loose 50 pounds and still be overweight and depressed, or do I want a life? That first challenge that my mentor gave me sparked a motivation in me to go from 12 at about 300 pounds to 14 at 160 pounds in just two years. Following that, I got bust out to policies charter high school. So I got bus from South Central out to the beach and that's were I in high school. I got recruited to the surf team as well as a basketball team and one on a completely different route from that. Coming to you guys today, as I mentioned, it's a very interesting time to talk about habits. My mom, at the end of 2017, she got diagnosed with stomach cancer. So the house that you guys saw in that video I had to come back from everything that I was doing. I went all around the world, I learn from different people, got mentors. But since my mom got sick, I came back, and I spent a lot of time at that place, and at the same time, I got an injury. I had a surf contests and I injured my ankle. It brought me to a place where I wasn't mobile, I wasn't able to move in a lot of ways. Over just a short period of time, I found myself gaining 50 pounds, which is not much compared to what I lost before, but the significance is that it brought me back to a mental place, a stressful place where I was when I was 12 at 300 pounds. A few things that I want you guys to take over, a few things that I actually want you to think about, are different patterns that lead up there. This is actually something that's good to bring up with my puppy. My puppy, she is a very picky eater. She's a type of dog that will be very messy, and I discovered when I first got her, that if I drop her bow on the ground and just let her eat, she will just throw everything everywhere. It just seems like there's no order to what she's doing, and when I come back, there's food all over the place. So I tried to understand and tried to think about why this happens or tried to feed her myself, it didn't work. Then I start to understand the patterns and really observe her behavior. So I observed her behavior and I understood that she was actually really trying to get down to the bottom because that's where the meat was and all the vegetables and stuff she threw all over the place and ate that last. So I say that to say, as we think about patterns and think about stress, we can often deal with people, even people that we love, like my puppy, and they can frustrate us. A professor can frustrate you, another student as well [inaudible] can frustrate you. But if you think about the patterns that led them up to that act or led up them to that behavior, then that might actually help you understand and help you think about ways to circumvent that. How does that relate to the surfing story? A lot of the kids that I deal with, it's funny because we talk about mental health in this classroom, and you don't realize how grateful you are to have this conversation with your professor about mental health and stress. Because the place where I come from, South Central, mental health is ignored. When I was in kindergarten, at any point if I didn't understand the question, I acted out in any way. My kindergarten teacher looking me in the eye and told me that you're a bad kid and you'll never amount to anything. The way that some people deal with mental health, is to ignore it or just to tell you that you're a bad person. So I think this is actually cool that you guys have a class where you can openly have a discussion about mental health and speaking about these things and speaking about how to decrease stress.
