By: Jaclyn Kalina

Taking place here at High School East, juniors had the opportunity to attend the assembly with Clean Slate Living: a nonprofit organization led by Matt Pisani that promotes an alternative, positive way of living. With good tunes and positive vibes, the assembly was most certainly a success! 

You may ask, what does clean slate living really mean? Living a “clean slate” type of lifestyle entails putting past mistakes behind you and moving forward. Matt shared his past experiences, which consisted of developing a drug addiction. Once he started drugs, he thought he could never discard them. Surrounding himself with negative influences only fueled the fire and he started to become someone so foreign to his former self. He shared how scary that was, and I felt that him sharing so openly and honestly with the audience was touching. Although his drug addiction was severe, he assured us that it is possible to come back from it. Your past decisions do not define who you are and there is always a path out of these types of situations. For Matt, he started to sober up. Although it was a long, extensive process, nonetheless, he overcame his addiction and he is now happier than ever with a wife and two children.

One thing that was unique about this assembly and stood out amongst the rest was Matt’s talent. From the start, Matt has been a rapper and loves to create music. He has his own spotify and youtube channel where he releases music with powerful meanings. At the assembly, he shared a couple of his songs. It was amazing to see the crowd get together and enjoy his music and even sing along. I most definitely will add his music to my playlist and you definitely should too!

Especially during junior year, it can be a struggle to manage school work while simultaneously keeping up with good mental health. Stress can easily pile up and lead to scary addictions that involve the use of harmful substances. Whether it involved drugs or not, it is important to remember you can leave the past being you and start anew. It could be as little as scoring poorly on a test; that test does not define you, but rather your response will impact your success in the future. The assembly perfectly captured these meaningful messages that will definitely stick with me and hopefully other students throughout life!