Ahoy all, and thanks for coming to my TED Talk! My name is Jasper or Niamh, but my friends call me Ivy. I am 17 years old and attending a community college. I am also in an honor society that lets me volunteer, and this week I am volunteering at a blood drive! My current favourite class at the college is probably either English or Psychology. I have precalculus midterms next week, and I fear I am boiled. I am so scared. I am not good at math. Pray for me.

Since I am an overachiever and love yapping and long word counts I’m going to be having so many paragraphs and little sections like this is a Wikipedia page (fun fact: I am a Wikipedia editor). This will be on the test later.

Firstly, my hobbies and interests. I like to sing, write, dance, read, find new movies and music, and play D&D. I love Audrey Hepburn and the 1950s in terms of fashion, movies, and music. My current favourite game to play is Splatoon 3 and my favorite game mode in that game is Salmon Run! My favorite game in general is Team Fortress 2 but I have also never played it in my life. That being said, I have created a massive extended universe and many OCs for it, writing several long-form fics. Because I am stupid about a certain goofy silly man in that game. Some of my favourite movies are Forrest Gump, About Time, Dead Poets' Society, Swing Kids and 10 Things I Hate About You. In general, I prefer animated movies over live-action movies, but I love rom-coms and movies that will hurt me emotionally. My favourite music artists are Mitski, TV Girl, Will Wood, BABYMETAL, Jhariah… I’m probably missing some but whatever.

I have a lot of invisible disabilities as well as chronic pain. I am diagnosed with POTS and hEDS, and my neurologist is currently wondering whether I have fibromyalgia and ME/CFS. I have chronic migraines. I looove being a disability advocate and learning about my disability as well as teaching others about that, too! I am a cane user and I love decorating my cane; it’s a lifesaver. As for mental things, I’m neurodivergent with ADHD and synesthesia, and possibly autism!

@amazaeevee told me to talk about Ilia Malinin and I WILL. I’ve liked him since 2024 because of his “I’m Not a Vampire” routine and I was SOOO excited he was in the Olympics, which I usually don’t even watch. (well, I usually watch the figure skating anyways). He did so well and I’m so glad he brought home gold but the final free skate was diabolical like I was actually GRIEVING. I was going through it the stages of grief and everything like no way he dropped to EIGHTH. But still I was so proud of him and he is still so awesome !! And I was proud of Kazakhstan for their first skating gold!! I also love Alysa Liu I could never be a figure skater but man I would loooove to.

Something I’m proud of is that I’ve written a full-length novel and I’m working on the sequel. I’ve not published it yet but I’m aiming for this year, hopefully spring! It’s a sci-fi dystopian novel. Dystopia is basically something that runs through my veins. I’ve been able to read since I was 3 and I’ve been reading young adult/adult dystopia since I was 7. I don’t know if that was a good idea or not, but it happened, and I’m intensely attached to it. I’m also attached to Star Trek, which I was also raised on, and I’ve seen almost every show put out. Every one worth watching, at least. Some are not, and I will fight you on that.

I am REALLY heavily interested in linguistics. I can go on about that for hours. In English my current project is a research project about text slang being a dialect and its effect on person-to-person communication. I’m so excited about it because I get to conduct a survey. I love language and the way it evolves and how we as people are able to put our own influence on the language we speak. Learning how text slang is something of a worldwide dialect is also very cool. That’s what I’m currently studying, the spread of slang and the usage of it in verbal communication. On the off chance anyone reads this whole thing I would love your opinion on that because it is like such a hyperfixation of mine!!

My favorite superhero is Squirrel Girl. I don’t know why I put this here but I felt like it

Some other random facts. I’m hispanic and irish. I love empanadas and horchata. I had a small quinceanera for my fifteenth birthday. One time, at a symphony, the conductor invited me to dance to a swing song, and I don’t know what overtook me but I did, up and down the aisles of the auditorium to the song Sing, Sing, With a Swing by the Benny Goodman band! This song is featured in one of my previously mentioned favorite movies, Swing Kids! I really like Swing Kids because it’s like everything I’d ever want out of a movie. Again, I am very into vintage stuff. I tend to dress in a way that people either call dressy casual, or makes them describe me as a vampire, which is kind of the best compliment I could ever hope to achieve. I love being able to dress this way. I started with my personal sense of style by copying Audrey Hepburn directly, and then spread it out to my own style. I still really love her. I love her acting, her humanitarian works, and her sense of humor. She had a lot of good advice that I still follow. I could talk about her for hours, too. But I’m going to wrap this up. Bye guys.