Internet Star Comes to Class
- Mar 3, 2017
- 3 min read
Chicken biscuits won’t ever be the same.
We were all sitting in Carroll Hall, in the middle of “Branding of Me,” a course designed by J-school God Gary Kayye. The purpose of the course is to help students create a solid in-person and online presence to obtain their post-grad goals.
Every Friday, we all come in pretty groggy (mostly from a typical Chapel Thrill Thursday night out), but Gary always brings in food, making the day 100 times better. Today, chicken biscuits covered the table. “Thank God” I thought as I walked in, after jogging to class, running late.
The theme of today’s class was storytelling- something that clearly interests me. We watched a Ted Talk video (that embarrassingly brought me to tears) featuring a wonderful orator who sought an apology from a man who hit him in a car wreck, breaking his neck: https://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_prager_in_search_for_the_man_who_broke_my_neck.
Then, Gary started telling us about his own life- his experiences from being in grade school in small town NC, to his college life at UNC's journalism school, to his time now with his daughters after founding the successful Rave Publications. It was insightful and admirable to have a teacher, who all of the students look up to, open up to us about his tribulations and successes.
Randomly, someone knocked on the door, and Gary says “Oh, this will be fun.”
We all looked around at each other confused as Gary opened the door.
Apollos Hester walks in, and our class starts cheering. I nearly dropped the bite of chicken biscuit I had just stuffed in my mouth. If you don’t know who this is, check out the video that went viral: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7ymriMhoj0.
The video has gotten 10, 179, 959 views on YouTube. Apollos has 19.7K followers on Twitter and 10.4k followers on Instagram- need I say more? These memes have also become Facebook/Reddit/Instagram famous:
Gary had shown us the famous video in class a couple weeks back, so we were stoked (to say the least) that THE Apollos Hester was in our class.
And- he was the exact same as in the video. His positivity and personality were overwhelming in the best possible way.
He told us about his path to fame. The day after the interview, the Ellen DeGeneres Show called him. They asked him to be on the show- on one condition- that they were his first interview. Unfortunately, Apollos’s coach had already signed him up for interviews with a couple stations, including Fox.
Apollos (who is 19) was just hired by Gary to work at Rave Publications. He says that one day he wants to play professional football, and/or become an actor. But more importantly, he “wants to share light to the world.”
He has no doubt done so already. His upbeat demeanor filled the room like oxygen, giving everyone a breath of fresh air. While he talked, every single person in the room had a large grin on their face. He told us that people have emailed him thanking him for saving them, as they were about to take their own lives before being inspired by his video. He humbly attributed this to God and his parents.
My favorite piece of advice Apollos gave us: “If you wanna have a positive effect on someone’s life, just love man, just love.”
Apollos encouraged us to all have a positive outlook on life, and in turn, life will be better to us.
He talked to the class as if we were his long-time friends, giving someone a high-five, willingly making an appearance in someone's vlog, and taking selfies with students after class.
He said that you never know the impact you could have on someone’s day or life, and it’s true. My day started out poorly, as I was anxiety-ridden over my workload, and he truly boosted my mood, leaving me saying to myself “it’s all good Allie, you are going to kick ass on your exams next week, and better yet- these exams don't matter in the grand scheme of life."
Thanks Apollos (and Gary).
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