When I first saw a Facebook post calling for hard-working and dedicated individuals to help organize the TEDxNYUAD event, I was curious. I was — and perhaps still am — an overeager freshman, attending all activities and leaving no sign-up sheet untouched at the SIG fair. I had helped out at a few one-night events, Diwali, Moto-Moto and others, and thought this would be a good way to get involved in a more long-term project.

I knew of TED as a series of talks by famous people about important things. I knew they were a big deal. I had watched a few of the most well-known ones: The Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor, and the Danger of a Single Story, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. But that was it. Nevertheless, I was excited to help out with the first ever TEDxNYUAD event and joined the planning team.

The work began from day one. Although I was officially part of the marketing team, I helped out in a lot of different ways, from writing material for the website to helping set up the venue to coordinating volunteers. Although there were times when the work felt stressful during the long meetings — as well as the two hours spent wandering through Al Meena Souk searching for a carpet just the right size and shade of red, only to find the exact kind we were looking for at IKEA — I feel like I gained a tremendous amount from this experience. Not only did I gain skills that will be useful later in life, but I helped to contribute to what I hope will be a long-term endeavor at NYU Abu Dhabi.

Throughout the project, I’ve also come to realize the importance of TED and TEDx events. When I first signed up, I thought TED talks were simply educational talks. After I first saw the talks by the TEDxNYUAD speakers, I was blown away, but I still thought of them as just interesting stories and nothing else. I sometimes questioned why I was putting this much time and effort into this project. When searching for the carpet, I began to think that the whole endeavor was pointless. I thought that people would hear the talks, enjoy them and forget about them the next day. Why should I spend months helping to set up, putting time and effort into making sure every detail of the event was perfect, even for something as mundane as a carpet, only for it to be forgotten on April 21?

It was only when I heard audience members say how inspired they were, or saw tweets about how their perspectives had changed, that my own view of TED shifted.

TEDxNYUAD allows viewers to connect with their fellow students and members of the UAE community on a different level. Too often, we only know people through their answers to questions such as, Where are you from? and What is your major? Despite our campus being relatively small, students still struggle to know one another on a more concrete level. As one of the speakers, senior Mohit Mandal, put it, “Each of us wants to feel like a part of a community, like we are a part of something larger.”

TEDxNYUAD hopefully helped enhance the NYUAD community by allowing people to make connections with speakers and to find similarities within their stories. Maybe someone who wants to follow their passions was inspired by senior Sara Al Shamlan talk about curiosity, or someone who was a bully or had been bullied was touched by Zayed University student Meera Al Agroobi’s talk.

The theme for this year’s talks was Question, with an aim to start conversations about our pre-conceived notions and ideas of various subjects, from video games to curiosity to bullies. But more importantly, the talks aimed to inspire viewers to question things in their own lives. Hopefully, people began to question their ideas of home after hearing junior Sam Ridgeway’s talk, why we should innovate after hearing sophomore Vasily Rudchenko speak or our perceptions of fellow expats in Abu Dhabi after hearing Mandal’s experience. Although this was the first time this event occurred, I hope that TEDxNYUAD brought our school closer as a community as well as prompted others to question themselves, their surroundings, and their perceptions. As one of the speakers, Hayat Muhammed Seid said, “We can use our differences to thread together a beautifully-crafted quilt, made up of each of our identities.” I hope TEDxNYUAD has helped NYUAD begin to sew its quilt.