“I need to tell you about the disc theory,” my basically big brother Kristian told me.
“I’m sorry, the what?” I didn’t know what in the world the disc theory was and my vacation brain prevented me from inferring. So, I asked what it was.
He didn’t explain anything until I got back into town from the holidays.
In essence, the disc theory works like a record player for your mind. The disc itself is an attitude that everyone wants to have. That attitude then gets inserted into the player, which in this case is your mind. So as the disc plays, it’s the person putting their attitude into action.
Maybe it’s worth becoming a part of the Comm Theory curriculum.
Kristian laid down a simple, yet effective premise, now came the time to carry it out. But that last part always proves to be the hardest in any task, especially now.
Last year, when I wrote my first introduction piece, I was in a very similar, yet different position in my life.
I was 18 going on 19 and recently promoted to an editor position by former EIC Avery Escamilla-Wendell. At the same time, I was scared of using Adobe Premiere Pro, had never hosted a podcast in my life, and was just a month out from a situation that seems too petty to call heartbreak.
But I felt secure in myself.
A feeling that took months of hard work to get to.
“Read this card and keep it with you,” my uncle Aldo said to me.
He had taken notice of my moppy attitude. I was a senior in high school, and my self image wasn’t all too high. A couple of weeks before I had competed at a UIL speech and debate event.
At the time, that event felt like the Super Bowl.
Why? Simple, because at that time I wanted nothing more than to win a speech award from an out of town tournament and this was probably going to be my last chance to get it. Getting that was the only thing I hadn’t accomplished in the activity.
So, with that want, I went over to Dallas, and flopped. To my speech and debate peeps you know what I mean when I say I took two sixes. For everyone else, out of three judges, two gave me last.
For the final weeks of my senior year, I felt that the years I had put into the activity were only good enough for last place.
Then I read the card.
The Pyramid of Success…
Hard work. Dedication. Patience.
And at the very top…
A little bit of faith.
That card remains in my wallet today. It also made me reconsider what success was.
Flash forward to a year later, I had spent almost an entire semester at The Prospector, went to my first collegiate nationals and won a number of awards, broadcasted on ESPN+ and had a banner of me put up on campus – with no one drawing a mustache on it…yet.
“How do I follow this up?”
That thought didn’t eat at me the way the want to win did when I was younger. But it still lingered. After all, we live in a world where one day you are praised, the next you are forgotten about.
There are so many uncontrollable factors in our everyday lives, it is impossible for everything to always go right and I had learned that lesson too many times to count over the years.
So, in order to avoid learning it again, I talked about it with others.
“What is your goal?” Kristian asked me.
“I want to be the best storyteller I can be,” I responded back.
“Then get on the disc,” Kristian said to me.
That disc has made me take moments one at a time. It’s led to clean broadcasts and speeches, and it’s also helped me overcome mistakes and bad rounds.
The disc theory is not always perfect. Sometimes I even forget that it exists.
But in those moments, I always have a loved one to remind me what it is I need to be focusing on.
To these people, my parents, my cousins, my tios and tias, grandparents both living and passed, my friends who have turned into family, my academic mentors and more, thank you for your belief. I am not here without you.
I may still be in the spaces I occupied last year, but it feels different. I am no longer the youngest in the office, my traits are not a surprise but an expectation. What was once an innovation has now become the standard.
A couple of years ago I would’ve been pulling my hair out over this. However, when these thoughts come up today, I just repeat five words to myself…
“Get on the disc brother!”
Sebastian Perez-Navarro is the multimedia editor for The Prospector and can be reached at [email protected] or Instagram and X @sebastianpn8, and on LinkedIn @sebastianperez-navarro.
