Summary Of Dave Cornthwaite's Tedx Presentation

In Dave Cornthwaite’s TEDx presentation, he talks about his journey in life and how he found happiness. He explains how he struggled with many of the thoughts that college kids struggle with as well. More specifically, he talks about his struggle to find his identity and what he wanted to do with his life after college. Cornthwaite’s target audience is the young generation mainly college aged people dealing with the question of “What do you want to do for work after college?” Most college aged people feel the need to know exactly what they want to do right after college, because your degree is going to get you there. Cornthwaite explained to his audience that he followed “societies path” and got a job working for someone after college and he was completely unhappy with his decision. He wishes to persuade the audience to think about your passions, nurture them, and follow them.

He told the audience how he bought a longboard and loved the way it felt to ride it and decided it made him happy. He pursued this happiness and quite his job for a longboard journey. His ethos played a key role in his presentation because the audience could see there was a real transformation in his happiness after he accomplished goals and did the things that made him happy. This makes him extremely credible. His pathos was also very appealing throughout the entire presentation because he talks about stories that could relate to everyone in the audience and his emotion clearly helped with this. He also talks about his “vicious circle of badness” or “excuses” which give many examples that people use to not pursue their happiness. These excuses include: time, money, commitments, body and fear. Every person can relate to this “wheel” and say they have used one of these excuses to not do what makes them