to travel to hundreds of high schools across the country.

I stood on the front of tens of thousands of young people

and I've asked them a question, one simple question.

That question is:

What do you want to be remembered for?

What do you want your legacy to be?

When your time is done

walking up and down the halls of your high school,

what's that thing that you want to leave behind?

What's it that you want them to say about you?

I've asked tens of thousands of young people that question.

And what's crazy to me, is as I ask that question,

I begin to get responses back,

whether it's on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook

or emails or hand-written letters,

there's always a common thread throughout all the responses.

You know it has nothing to do with they want to remembred for their job,

they want to be remembered for the money that they make.

It was far different than that.

Young people all across the country

they all write and they tell me they want to be remembered for one thing:

and that's change.

They all want to be a part of something incredible.

They all want to be a part of bringing change to their communities,

to their schools, to the world.

And it doesn't matter where I go.

It doesn't if it's New York or L.A.

It doesn't matter if it's Washington or Florida,

Nashville or small rural communities in Nebraska.

Young people all across the United States,

they all want to be a part of something incredible.

You know I call that "The tiny whisper."

I think that this tiny whisper lives inside each and everyone of us.

I think there's this thing inside all of us

telling us that we can be about something incredible,

we can be about something big.

Have you ever asked the five or six year old

what they want to be when they grow up.

Their eyes light up, they look at you

and they give you responses with nothing but hope and excitement for the future.

The sky's the limit at that point.

"Mom, I want to be an astronaut."

"Dad, I want to be a firefighter."

"I want to be an artist, I want to be a musician."

When I was a young person I just wanted to be a ninja turtle.

(Laughter)

But as we grow up, that tiny whisper, it starts to change.

As we come from five to six to seven,

as we begin to hit middle school

which is the most awkward years for most of us,

as we survive that time in our life we went on into high school,

and all of the sudden,

it's like that tiny whisper start to get beat down by the outside world.

Young people start to hear from the first time:

"You can do that. You'll never make money doing this.

There's no college degree for that.

That's not a career."

And all the sudden,

that tiny little whisper that lives inside each and everyone of us

telling so we can be a part of something incredible,

that we can create something for ourselves,

will start to get drowned out by this outside noise,

this pressure and all of these abilities and desires and things

that we have to do to perform and to make it

to get better test grade, to get a better test score,

to make it to college because if you don't go to college

you can't have a career and if you don't have a career

you can't amount anything.

All of the sudden, that tiny whisper that lives inside of us,

it begins to just kinda get drowned out.

And then those people go from adolescence to adulthood,

and then when we come adults

we've kind of lost this idea that we have this thing,

we wanted to be about this thing that we were so passionate for

and we've almost cashed in this concept.

You know one good test that I give for a lot of people

I say, "Have you ever seen someone do something incredible?

Have you ever seen someone do something so inspiring?"

And you watch that and you see it,

and you're forced to respond one of two ways:

You see someone do something incredible inspiring

and it tells you man, that's amazing.

I got to go out to catch. I got to go do something

I got to go for feel what I was created to do

because that's incredible.

Or we see someone do something inspiring

and we instantly become jealous or angry or bitter.

It's almost like that person did what we couldn't do.

That person for feel that thing in them

that we could never for feel in ourselves.

They took that chance that we were willing to take.

And as young people we look at adults

and we feel like that's what we see in society,

we see the adults who maybe forgot

what that tiny little whisper was telling inside of them

when they were just the young kid.

You see, I have this thought,

it's this thought that every young person wants to remembered for something.

They do.

It's that driving force behind.

They all want to do something incredible,

they all want to be about something bigger.

And as we grow older, we're forced to make these decisions,

we're forced to decide,

we're forced to do things that tell us whether we can

or what we can't make it.

You know when I was young,

I thought education meant high school, college, degree.

And I believe that young people define education differently today.

I believe that young people, they define success very differently today.

When I talk to young people, success isn't how much money you make,

it's what kind of a difference you can make.

When I talk to young people, education isn't always about a degree,

it's about fulfilling that thing you think you were created to do.

You know, I walk in and out of high schools and I speak to young people

and I look at this raw emotion and passion in their eyes,

and I see that they so desperately want to be brilliant.

They so desperately want to fulfill this thing.

I think that being a part of something incredible,

I think it's written in the DNA of young people today.

I think it's written,

it's like it's been upload in the DNA

and the strands of who they are and who they think that they can become.

You know my education...

I graduated in high school with the 2.4 GPA.

I got a nineteen on my ICT.

I limped into college.

I'll never forget staying up late studying for test,

memorizing dates only to forget them as soon as I handed in.

That wasn't my education.

My education came,

when I started to listen to that tiny whisper inside me,

to that thing that told me I could be about something incredible

it came far after college.

It told me that Mike, you can take this piece of plywood

that's attached to some metal with some wheels on it.

That skateboard, that thing that your mom, dad and your friends

think you're too old to ride around on.

You can take that thing and you can use it to cause change.

You can take that thing and you can use it to give back.

You can take that skateboard and use it to make a difference.

I began to listen to that tiny whisper saying, "I think I can."

So I grabbed that skateboard and my backpack,

and in my backpack I put socks, food, water,

hygiene kits and bus passes.

I grabbed the couple young kids who still believe like I did,

that that tiny whisper was what we were supposed to do,

and we began skating around the street of Lincoln,

just feeding homeless people.

Giving out socks, giving out food, giving out water.

See, that was when my education started.

I found myself underneath a bridge

talking to people who'd lived outside for twenty or thirty years.

Those people became my professors.

Those people taught what it means to dream.

They taught what it means to succeed,

they taught what it means to fail.

Those people taught me what it means to believe in yourself

and they showed me,

what it looks like when you forget about that tiny little whisper

and you start to buy in to different things.

You see I stand before you today,

excited because I have this idea.

This social change is written in the DNA

of the young people who walk up and down the halls of high schools

that we see all across the United States of America.

I believe that young people, it's written in who they are

that they want to give back and they want to make a difference.

When I ask kids what they to stand for, what they want to do,

it's always these big concepts, and big ideas

that's they're going to have the ability, the opportunity.

Life has created them in a way to make change.

Life has given them a chance to be a part of something incredible.

You see I believe that the society that we live in today,

there is this gap between adults and there is this gap between kids

and I think the technology has a lot to do with that.

I think that the way the social media has a lot to do with that.

I mean how many of you adults

had have your kids asked you how to use their iPhone?

They've shown me what it means, they become your teachers.

So with this idea and this thought that change is written in the DNA,

in the hearts, in the minds and in the souls of young people,

I have a question for the adults today.

And my question is this:

Are you ready for us?

Because I believe that there is a tidal wave of young people coming.

A tidal wave of young people who believe just like I do.

They believe that making a difference matters more than making money.

There is a tidal wave of young people coming with 2.4 GPA.

There is a tidal wave of young people coming

who have degrees from YouTube University.

There is a tidal wave of young people coming

who follow their dreams and hopes and goals on Twitter,

and they post the things that they want to be about on Instagram.

I believe that there is a tidal wave of young people coming

who believe just like as I believe when I was a little kid

and like I believe now.

The change is written in our DNA.

So my question for the world today is,

are you ready for us?

Because we're coming.

Thank You.

(Cheers) (Applause)