My name is Josh Backer, I’m a YLab student at One Stone’s Lab51. My personal why statement is “inspire others through what I do so they can find their potential.” I think that my artifact ties really well into that, because I think that I have had such amazing opportunities that other people probably won't get to have and I almost feel like it’s my duty to try and pay it forward as much as I can with my skills to help inspire and encourage others to try and reach their full potential. I think that my experience going to Idaho city perfectly reflects my why. I was able to hopefully help those students be more inspired and encouraged to pursue game development in the future if that’s what they want to do.
I think that it’s really important to do good in the world. I think doing good in my own personal way is extremely important, in a day and age where it’s becoming so easy to just settle for what’s easy and be discouraged by the success by everyone else compared to themselves, it just breaks my heart to think of how many people just give up when they are capable of such amazing things but just couldn’t reach them for one reason or another. I want to be able to help those people. I want to be able to lift those people up and show them that they’re capable and that they could be doing such great things in the world and that they should be doing those things. My hope is that if I’m able to bring other people up and elevate them, it will trigger a ripple effect and the people I elevated will elevated others until theres not a single person on this planet that settles for less.
Having the opportunity to help with that workshop was amazing. With all the skills that I’ve gained over the past year I had almost kind of lost sight of why I wanted to do what I wanted to do. After doing this workshop it reframed my view and realigned my goals and I couldn’t be more grateful for having the experience.
