Senior Meredith Burke’s bucket list earns her recognition 

Senior Meredith Burke has grown up loving TEDx programs at Southern Methodist University. It all started when, in seventh grade, she attended the TEDx talks.

As a junior, Burke served as an advisor for Middle School stu­dents at the TEDx conference. This allowed Burke to see how each talk impacted the students.

Burke knew she had an inter­est in speaking to the students at a future TEDx. A contest oc­curs each year asking students to submit short videos explain­ing their topics.

“Last year I wanted to do it, but I didn’t have time. So, this year I was really determined to submit it because this is really my last year to do it,” Burke said.

Burke chose to do her video about her summer bucket list.

“I found that my summers were not spent very wisely because school is so rigorous, and during the summer I did not have that kind of direction,” explained Burke.

She began this bucket list in April and added new items as she thought of them. Her list included learning how to juggle, building a sand castle shaped like a VW Bug and going rollerblading, among other activities.

Students send videos to TEDx each year and a few are chosen as finalists. The finalists’ videos are then shown online and voting takes place. One or two of these students then have the opportu­nity to speak at TEDx. Grace Gilker ‘14 and sixth grader Isabella Page qualified to speak at TEDx during their time as Hockaday students.

“The Hockaday community was so supportive during the competition,” Burke explained, af­ter finding out she had not been chosen to speak at TEDx.

“I got emails from sixth grad­ers who I hadn’t ever met who said them and their families voted for me every single day.”

– Austria Arnold