Dalton Waterman
Sports Editor
Sports Editor
Over the years the class of 2014 has gone through numerous dull presentations about drug prevention. Every time some doctor or some person that knows about all of the negative impacts drugs can have stands up there, they pour all of their knowledge onto the students and think that they will come to an epiphany and never do drugs again. The fact is that we listen to those presentations as they are happening, but immediately after, there is harsh mockery of the presentation; and not too soon after that there is no memory of what was supposed to be an informative drug assembly. It was soon realized that in order to get to students about drugs, there has to be a story behind it that teaches a lesson. When the sophomores and juniors took the PSATs, the senior class was inspired by a motivational person, with a heartwarming and informative story.
Tim Rader is a former straight A student, captain of the football team, and one of the most popular kids in his school, but this soon became a thing of the past as he fell into the downward spiral of drug addiction. He started off talking about his high school days. He kept going back to how he tried to please everyone and get everyone to like him. He talked about his football days and how he was going to get recruited and get a full scholarship. He talked about how he saved his little cousins life when he rescued her from drowning in the pool. He talked about all of the friends he had, and how everyone liked him. It’s ironic because he succeeded in getting everyone to like him, but ultimately it is what ruined his life.
All it takes is a couple of bad choices to spiral your life out of control. He explained how he made those mistakes, but he thought that nothing would happen to him, and nothing did for a while, until addiction came back to ruin his life. Addiction will always decide when to come back and ruin you, even if you have it all. This was the biggest lesson he was trying to teach through his life story.
He kept mentioning how all of these drug presenters came to his school droned on and on about the effects of drugs, and how he would get nothing out of it. His story was inspirational and it seemed to move a lot of people. He even said that if you don’t get anything out of this presentation take a couple of “I nevers” and hold onto them for the rest of your life, but it seemed that everyone did get something out of this presentation because it was different. If there is one presentation about drugs that the seniors will remember, it will be this one.
