Source of Success Channel’s Journey
My name is Nathamon Silprachawong (Hilight). I am currently a freshman at International Community School. In today’s article, I would like to share with you my journey as a 9th grader who aspires to advocate, inspire, and raise awareness to a variety of cultural topics through youth-led interviews.
The Source of Success committee was founded when I was given the opportunity to interview Mr. Apirak Kosayodhin – former Bangkok governor and the founder of the V-Food company.
I viewed my first interview as a chance to further explore the journalism field. Due to my lack of experience, I hastily prepared my interview questions without knowing what kind of background information I should have about my interviewee and what is considered “enough.” Moreover, I was further motivated to conduct this interview with my peers, because I recently just took a global issues and creative writing courses at school.
These two classes perpetuated my passion for shedding light on issues that have been looked upon through the art of writing, advocacy through public speaking, and storytelling.
At that point in time, before the interview, I was a rising freshman. Our middle school teachers had always encouraged us to explore different fields and search for our passions.
I was one of the 8th graders who was desperately scouring for that moment of a sudden breakthrough in which I discovered my passion, similar to a workaholic craving their long overdue vacation.
Therefore, to alleviate my apprehensiveness before my first interview, I’ve decided to treat this as a utensil to test out my skill set and to just go with the flow.
This article will take you through a chronological overview of our (Source of Success’) journey in initiating this project, campaign, and committee to advocate, inspire, and raise awareness. We’ve also embedded applicable tips that we’ve gained from the interview experience with Mr. Apriak Kosayodhin and connected นพ. วีรวัช เอนกจำนงค์พร or P’Vivian’s response to a major stereotype-related issue.
At the same time, I also reflected upon what’s going on in the status quo through the insights that have been shared by our interviewees.
1st Interview
The interview series was conducted by students from International Community School – Hilight, Tata, IQ, and Aiko. It unpacked Mr. Apirak’s life as a successful entrepreneur in the plant-based industry. Furthermore, we also aimed to distribute emphasis on the different aspects of his life from his transition as a Bangkok Governor to an entrepreneur to his experiences at Harvard University.
All in all, I am proud to proclaim the fact that the voices of these interviews aimed to convey that the only constant element is change. These transformations are signs of new journeys or signals of the greatness that’s about to occur.
Most likely, these indicators of change may lead to a rough journey full of bruises and bumps, but we should always be aware that through these hardships, we’d be able to develop tenacity, perseverance, and resilience.
As said by Thomas A. Edison “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” And so based on the interview with Mr. Apirak, we’ve gained several insightful nuggets of wisdom from him.
The most inspirational business tip to become a creative start-up is to try to discover your strengths and weaknesses in order to be able to work passionately — and since we now live in a digital age, we have resources all around us. We can self-learn and look for the important pieces of information that we could incorporate into our business. For instance, using statistics to analyze customers’ behaviours. The ability to have the audacity to take risks and overcome challenges is also one of the keys to success.
As said by Mr. Apirak, “You need to understand yourself. What are your strengths?”
In order to “love what you do,…work passionately towards your goal or purpose that you’d like to be successful in.”
2nd Interview
The month of June is when billboards are feverishly stripped with rainbow flags and stores are plastered with pride month special deals. It is a time when we celebrate LGBTQ+ pride!
Yet, on the flip side, this could also be a season where conglomerates festively take advantage of pink dollars through the exploitation method, widely known as “rainbow washing”.
To further my research and activism in this field, I’ve decided to interview an individual who I truly admire as one of the top aesthetic physicians in Thailand, and is also looked up to as the top Biology tutorial educator.
This individual has ignited several’s interests in the medical field and has thoroughly motivated me to dive deeper into taboo topics, for instance: representation, queer youth’s wellness, and LGBTQ+ rights. The interview series is posted on the Source of Success Youtube channel.
Our interview with P’Vivian is a part of our series interviewed by Hilight, Herme and Jinny (ICS).
This interview series unpacks P’Vivian’s life story to success, an insight into Thai culture representation through the ideal facial features from an aesthetic physician’s perspective, her path to becoming a trailblazer physician and educator in Thailand, and a valuable lesson about perseverance and resilience. In the interview series, we also talk about P’Vivian’s journey as a queer youth, and give closer look into this generation’s wellness, with an emphasis on queer youth as well as pride parades and the celebration of Pride month in Thailand.
Through the exploration of P’Vivian’s personal life journey and underrepresented queer experiences, the voices from these discussions and interviews aim to convey how Thai culture is represented through an aesthetic physician’s lens and express the limitations that LGBTQ+ members face. Apart from highlighting queer identities, we also hope to spotlight P’Vivian’s valuable lifelong lessons shared throughout the series regarding perseverance and resilience and P’Vivian’s journey.
In this interview series, P’Vivian opens up about his queer childhood and how he’s been raised by his parents. When asked by his father whether or not he’s interested in becoming a general attorney, “I told him that I can’t because I’m too feminine.”
This particular quote from the interview with P’Vivian provided us with the opportunity to further explore the stereotypical elements of professions that have been culturally, systemically, and intrinsically enforced in Thai society, because it indicates that we still perceive that a certain gender fits best with a particular job, while others don’t.
For background information, the majority of stereotypes are acquired in early childhood ages under the influence of parents, peers, teachers, and the media. Hence, in order to amend these harmful notions, we need to educate parents on the importance of being well-informed parents, since as parents, they have the power to influence their children’s mindset. It is time for us to demolish the crystallization of these antiquated, untrue misconceptions regarding professions.
For example, nursing, public relations, and teaching are considered “female-gendered.” Meanwhile, engineers, stock trading, and construction are considered “male-gendered” professions.
In truth, gender lies on a spectrum. To clarify, the Kinsey scale could be used to illustrate and rate an individual’s sexual orientation based on their experiences, preferences, and response at a given time. The scale is also known as the heterosexual-homosexual rating scale.
By way of conclusion, through these interview series with motivational figures, we also aim to pave a way for particular communities and intersectional identities.
— Writer Nathamon Silprachawong can be reached at n.hilight@gmail.com. Follow her on Instagram @hilightsilprachawong and on Facebook at Hilight Silprachawong.
— Editor Yu (Lulu) Juan can be reached at juanyu.lulu@gmail.com. Follow her on Instagram @juanyu.lulu.
