Meet Carleton University's TedX volunteer manager

Most of the time, people go to post-secondary education to learn a new skill or to get informed in a certain field; to build a career that will support them for the rest of their lives.

Amelia Cameron wants something different. She wants to learn about the philosophies of life and the history that shaped culture to what it is now. School for her is not about building a career. It is about understanding herself and growing from her own past experiences and everyone around her.

Nineteen-year-old Cameron grew up in Toronto under a progressively thinking Jewish family. Talks of religion and God is not something that is regularly addressed in her family she says.

“The community that I was raised in is very progressive and very verging on socialism,” Cameron adds “The concept of God was never even discussed.”

Cameron is a first-year Bachelor of Humanities student at Carleton University, Ottawa. In the Great Books program, she is learning about religions and “looking at the history of modern society through the great books of literature.”

She best enjoys studying and reading the Bible, she thinks it is interesting how she can ‘isolate’ the book and read it as a text rather than ‘an all-powerful truth.’

“There’s a really big difference between the way people read it now and the actual society in which it was written.”

In middle school, Cameron describes herself as someone who was part of the ‘popular’ clique, however that did not stop other kids in school to ridicule and bully her over her interests or lack of interest in the activities most kids were in.

“It manifested itself in like, a lot of anxiety for me around fitting in because I wasn't interested in the same things that my peers were,” Cameron says “I don't like pop music ... so when everybody started partying, I like didn't want to participate. And it just like made everything feel very isolated.”

She says that her high school was scientific and athletic based, which is why she never learned about the things she is intrigued by like arts, history and books.

“I like wasn't sure I was going to graduate high school for a little bit,” she says “I just I had a really, really hard time, being a human and like figuring out how to exist.”

Cameron was diagnosed with anxiety and depression at the age of 12. Her mental health struggles are a result of the bullying she faced in school and “mean girls’’ gossip.

Watching TEDx videos and slam poetry helped her go through the hard times and motivated her to graduate high school “saying a big f**k you” to everyone that did not believe in her.

“I think coming to Carleton now like I've kind of found my community of people who are like, interested in the same things as me and kind of appreciate, like, the things that I am knowledgeable about, which has been really cool.”

One of the community groups that Cameron found on campus is TEDx Carleton. It is a non-profit organization that is mean to gather different people in a community to unleash new ideas, inspire and inform.

Cameron is part of the eight programming committee members at the independent organization.

On Sunday Feb. 2, TEDx is holding an event with speakers of different backgrounds at Carleton University’s Richcraft Building from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Cameron will be acting as a volunteer manager at the event.