B. Novice Impromptu Event Prompts

Round 1 (9:30am)

  1. Speaker 1


    • “When people show you who they are, believe them.” — Maya Angelou
    • “I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself.” — Anais Nin
    • “We are told we must choose — the old or the new. In fact, we must choose both.” — Susan Sontag
  2. Speaker 2


    • “I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me ‘I love you.’” — Maya Angelou
    • “We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are.” — Anais Nin
    • “I believe that courage is morally neutral. I can well imagine wicked people being brave and good people being timid or afraid.” — Susan Sontag
  3. Speaker 3


    • “I believe most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.” — Maya Angelou
    • “Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself.” — Anais Nin
    • “Thinking is a form of feeling; feeling is a form of thinking.” — Susan Sontag
  4. Speaker 4


    • “I am capable of what every other human is capable of. This is one of the great lessons of war and life.” — Maya Angelou
    • “Love reduces the complexity of living.” — Anais Nin
    • “To love one's work is a way of loving oneself, and leaves one freer to love other people.” — Susan Sontag
  5. Speaker 5


    • “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” — Maya Angelou
    • “Life shrinks or expands according to one's courage.” — Anais Nin
    • “So successful has been the camera's role in beautifying the world that photographs, rather than the world, have become the standard of the beautiful.” — Susan Sontag
  6. Speaker 6


    • “There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.” — Maya Angelou
    • “You cannot save people, you can only love them.” — Anais Nin
    • “Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers.” — Susan Sontag
  7. Speaker 7


    • “You don't have to think about doing the right thing. If you're for the right thing, then you do it without thinking.” — Maya Angelou
    • “I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing.” — Anais Nin
    • “Ambition, if it feeds at all, does so on the ambition of others.” — Susan Sontag

Round 2 (1:15pm)

  1. Speaker 1


    • “The longer you wait, the harder it gets.” — The 40 Year-Old Virgin
    • “Reality is a thing of the past.” — The Matrix
    • “A man went looking for America, and he couldn't find it anywhere." —Easy Rider
  2. Speaker 2


    • “If at first you don’t succeed, lower your standards.” — Tommy Boy
    • “We scare because we care.” — Monsters, Inc.
    • “Love is a force of nature.” — Brokeback Mountain
  3. Speaker 3


    • “A lot can happen in the middle of nowhere.” — Fargo
    • “Everyone has one special thing.” — Boogie Nights
    • “Work sucks.” — Office Space
  4. Speaker 4


    • “Whoever wins, we lose.” — Alien vs. Predator
    • “Great trilogies come in threes.” — Scary Movie 3
    • “There is no gene for the human spirit.” — Gattaca
  5. Speaker 5


    • “Family isn’t a word. It’s a sentence.” — The Royal Tenenbaums
    • “Just because they serve you doesn’t mean they like you.” — Clerks
    • “Life is one long insane trip. Some people just have better directions." — Donnie Darko
  6. Speaker 6


    • “Nothing spreads like fear.” — Contagion
    • “All the power on earth can’t change destiny." — The Godfather Part III
    • “Everyone wants to be found." — Lost in Translation
  7. Speaker 7


    • “You don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies.” — The Social Network
    • “On every street in every city in this country, there is a nobody who dreams of being a somebody.” — Taxi Driver
    • “The future is history.” — 12 Monkeys

Finals (4:15pm)

  1. Speaker 1


    • It is estimated that 99% of all species that have ever lived on Earth are now extinct. — New York Times, 2014
    • 60% of people can’t get through a ten-minute conversation without lying. — University of Massachusetts, 2002
    • 2% of American voters thought Mitt Romney’s first name was Mittens. — Vanity Fair, 2012
    • Speaker 2


      • Only 8% of people manage to keep their New Year’s resolutions. — Statistic Brain Research Institute, 2012
      • Between 43% and 54% of pilots have admitted to falling asleep while flying.— European Cockpit Association, 2012
      • 15% of Google searches have never been searched before. — John Wiley, the lead designer for Google Search, 2013
      • Speaker 3


        • 20% of the songs on Spotify have received zero plays. — Forgotify, 2014
        • 28% of people who work in IT don’t tell their family and friends for fear of being asked for help fixing computers. — TEKsystems, 2013
        • 70% of youth in the juvenile justice system have a diagnosed mental illness.— The National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice, 2007

      • Speaker 4


        • 1 in 3 adults don’t get enough sleep. — Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2016
        • The world needs to produce at least 50% more food by 2050 to feed a projected 9 billion people. — United Nations Population Division, 2015
        • Only 18% of women major in computer science degrees at colleges and universities. — National Science Foundation, 2015
      • Speaker 5


        • 60% of nursing home residents never have visitors. — VolunteerGuide, 2013
        • 75% of Gen Z-ers don’t consider college the only path to a strong education. — Forbes, 2019
        • 46% of American adults will experience a mental illness during their lifetime. — National Council for Behavioral Health, 2019

      • Speaker 6


        • 84% of Americans say we are angrier than a generation ago. — NPR-IBM Watson Health Poll, 2019
        • Fewer than 2% of NCAA athletes go on to the professional level. — NCAA, 2018
        • One-third of adults still sleep with a comfort object. — Sleepopolis, 2019
      • Speaker 7


        • As many as 95% of millennials are "not saving adequately" for retirement. — National Institute on Retirement Security, 2018
        • 40% of Americans can’t name a single freedom protected by the First Amendment.  — Freedom Forum Institute, 2018
        • Five countries make up 60% of worldwide military.  — Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 2018