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Jula Creech

Mrs. Maciulewicz

English 1101

6 November 2020

Risk Taking

Kashfia Rahman, a young high school student in South Dakota, dedicated her time to

study and experiment why teenagers are higher risk takers than toddlers and adults. Her purpose

was to find out why teenagers take bigger risks and then how those risks affect their brains.

Kashfia does her own experiments on her fellow classmates, held right in her school library with

the help of her geography teacher. Her findings were astonishing and even helped her to win first

prize in the ISEF (International Science and Engineering Fair). She was able to successfully

come to many conclusions about her research. Including being able to understand how our

emotions can be affected by risk taking. Kashfia's use of ethos towards her teacher and others

throughout the speech is greatly used. She also uses pathos to help describe how the brain is

affected by risk taking and logos is very successful in explaining her findings and how she got to

them.

Towards the beginning and ending of her speech, Kashfia uses ethos to show how she is

not the only one to be credited for her findings. To be able to start her experiments and studies,

she needed the help from a teacher. In Kashfia’s speech she states, “My enthusiastic geography

teacher, who also happens to be my school's football coach, ended up as my cheerleader,

becoming my mentor to sign necessary paperwork” (Rahman 00:04:53-00:04:57). She uses the

word ‘necessary’ here, implying that without her teacher none of her research would have been

possible, therefore proving that she is not the only one to be credited for what she discovered.
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Not only did her geography teacher help get her experiment started by signing paperwork, but he

also helped to set everything up. He even helped to sort through some of the data that she

discovered throughout the experiment.

Kashfia also does this in a similar way at the end of her speech. She gives credit to those

hosting and working at the ISEF. These experienced adults were able to help her better

understand her findings and what they mean. In her speech she says, “I was able to present my

research to experts in neuroscience and psychology and garner valuable feedback” (Rahman

00:09:24-00:09:26). Now this doesn’t necessarily mean these people helped in her experiment,

but they certainly helped her better understand what her findings meant and what she could do

with this newfound information. In Kashfia’s mind, that was worth some amount of credibility

because she openly thanked them for their contributions in her speech.

The component of pathos also played an immense role in this speech. Kashfia didn’t

necessarily use her own experiences to appeal to the audience's emotions. Rather she used

examples from teenagers that would appeal to the ages of 13 to 18. Kashfia found out that when

teens are first introduced to high risks, like drinking at a party, they are less likely to take the

risk. However, the more and more a teenager has that risk in front of them, the more likely they

are to start taking that risk every time they have the opportunity. She also found out that the

emotional range of teenagers differ depending on their risk taking abilities. “And the results

showed that habituation to risk-taking could actually change a teen's brain by altering their

emotional levels” (Rahman 00:05:27-00:05:31). Teens who take more and higher risks tend to

have a lower emotional range. They lower the ability to feel fear, which causes their emotional

range to shrink. While on the other hand, teens who don’t take as many risks have a wider

emotional range. This is because they are still able to feel the fear that is associated with risk
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taking. “However, the more they were exposed to the risks through the simulator, the less fearful,

guilty and stressed they became. This caused a situation in which they were no longer able to feel

the brain's natural fear and caution instincts” (Rahman 00:07:17-00:07:26).

Logos, or logic, is best used in Kashfia’s speech through understanding how she came to

her findings and what exactly they mean. She found real world answers through a computerized

decision making simulation. Kashfia had 86 of her fellow students take a computerized test to

measure their risk taking behaviors. The results that she found are similar, if not completely

accurate, to the ones that people would face during real world situations. “This meant that I had

measured the process of habituation and its effects on decision-making” (Rahman

00:07:09-00:07:11). Kashfia was also able to properly measure her classmates emotions

throughout the process. Her classmates took the same test numerous times over the course of 3

days to ensure the most accurate feedback. “A control panel on the EEG headset measured their

various emotional responses: like attention, interest, excitement, frustration, guilt, stress levels

and relaxation. They also rated their emotions on well-validated emotion-measuring scales”

(Rahman 00:06:5300:-07:08).

Kashfia Rahman’s speech on “How Risk-Taking Changes a Teenagers Brain,” was a

success because she was able to give credibility to those who helped with her experiment

through ethos, she appealed to the viewers by using pathos so they could relate to real world risk

taking problems, and logos was used throughout the speech to help those better understand what

her experiment was and how she got to her conclusions. Overall, Kashifia’s speech was very

insightful on how teenagers are prone to risk taking and how their emotional state is affected by

it. She was able to successfully conduct experiments on fellow students and came to many

conclusions on why some teens are higher risk takers than others. Along with discovering how
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risk taking first starts with a teenager and how their emotions can differ depending on the amount

of risks they take. As Kashfia says at the end of her speech, “The more risks I took, the more

capable I felt of withstanding my unconventional circumstances, leading to more tolerance,

resilience and patience” (Rahman 00:10:53-00:10:56).

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Works Cited

Rahman, Kashfia. “Transcript of ‘How Risk-Taking Changes a Teenager's Brain.’” TED,

2019,

www.ted.com/talks/kashfia_rahman_how_risk_taking_changes_a_teenager_s_brain

/transcript?language=en.