When you are a teenager and a junior high or high school student, life is not so easy. You are so busy every day. And there is a lot of pressure on you. You must study a lot. You must have many classes. You must write many tests. You have only a little free time. If your tests are not good maybe you feel sad. It is very hard to find your motivation when you are a teenager.

To make things worse, sometimes older people say things about younger people that are not very kind. Maybe they say something like, “Young people today are no good”, or “Young people have no stamina. They have no guts!” Then older people will talk a lot about how life was great when they were young. Older people today tell younger people that they were better and that they worked very hard and studied very hard every day.

I am not sure if I can believe the stories of some of those old people. But let’s talk today about younger people. Let’s talk today about some genius teenagers who made a big impact on the world.

I want to introduce to you a 14 year old girl from India named, Remya Rose. She is a girl who was asked by her mother to wash clothes for the family. Mom was not feeling good and asked her daughter to wash all the clothes by the nearby river. Remya did go and wash the clothes but she was shocked that it took so much time to wash everything. She thought that there must be a better way. So, with some bicycle parts and with a broken washing machine she combined the two to make a bicycle powered washing machine. This genius invention saved time, saved energy, and was cleaner than using the river. Now her special machine is used all over Africa for people who have the same kind of trouble. Remya Rose is a genius teen.

Two young men, Sun Ming Wong who is 17 years old, and his friend King Pong Li, who is 18 made a very important device to help us in the corona age. They created a door handle that kills bacteria. They discovered that titanium oxide can kill off up to 99.8% of all bacteria. Inside the door handle is a LED light that activates the titanium to stop bacteria. The cost is only about 1,300 yen, and it will save thousands of human lives. Sun Ming Wong and King Pong Li are genius teens.

In America, an 18 year old student named Eesha Khare has invented a way for cell phones to charge their batteries in 20 to 30 seconds. She developed a “super charger” for cell phones and one day will design a charger that will be inside the phone. So, in this way, you never need a wire or cord to charge your cell phone in the future. Eesha Khare is a genius teen.

Are you a genius teen? Do you know any genius teens here at Otemae? Maybe there are a few genius teens here today. I think that is very possible. There are many problems that we have in the world, and modern problems sometimes need a modern way to find a solution. Some older people maybe do not believe in young people today, but I think that your teachers here at Otemae believe in you. That is why they come here to work every day to teach you. They come here because they believe that you are important, and that you will one day lead the future.

To be a genius is a very difficult thing to be. Maybe there are many people giving you some pressure. Maybe, there are many people who need to ask you to help them with everything. Thomas Edison once said that success is 1% genius and 99% hard work. Maybe that is true, but we do know that hard work over a long time period can make good results.

We can be inspired by the great genius minds of the world. Marie Curie who developed physics, Albert Einstein for his ideas, Leonardo DaVinci for his art, and mathematics, and painting, Charles Darwin in biology, Steve Jobs in technology, and Stephen Hawking in astrophysics. These are all great genius minds and we need to study them to understand our world better.

But for the rest of us, for the ordinary people like you and I, there is another kind of genius. This is the genius of “never quitting”. There is a genius in continuing to work, and fight, and study, and move ahead. This is the genius of all humans, and there is so much we can do together. So, do not be sad that maybe you are not a genius naturally. Be happy that you know you can have a dream and a chance to live a good life, and know that your future is your own story, and you can write anything you like.