Austin Scholar #61: The slime obsession that taught 6th-grade girls more than their classes did
& how to use internet trends to teach life skills
Hey, y'all!
When I was in sixth grade, I learned more from making slime than I did from actual school. Really.
At first glance, internet trends look like a total waste of time, but sometimes they can be your kid's best teacher.
This week from Austin Scholar...
Austin’s Anecdote: The slime obsession that taught 6th-grade girls more than their classes did
How to use internet trends to teach life skills
Scholar’s Sources: My favorite examples of teens building trend-driven businesses
I have one week of studying left before my AP exams. It’s absolutely crazy how fast this year has gone by. It seems like just yesterday I was writing about my struggles with last year’s AP tests. Now suddenly, I have to take the exams for the most important academic year of my life–and how I score on them can dramatically impact where I go to college. No pressure.
I’m just taking deep breaths and preparing myself as best as I can–but maybe send me some good luck :)
Austin’s Anecdote: The slime obsession that taught 6th-grade girls more than their classes did
We all remember the slime trend of 2017 (and if you don’t, here’s a refresher).
As a bright-eyed 11-year-old, I wanted nothing more than to be part of the trend. My cool friends at school were always up-to-date on the latest cool things for the cool people to do, so they knew all about slime.
And I, wanting to be just like them, started watching every “slime tutorial” and “100 slimes unboxing?!” video on YouTube.
I became absolutely obsessed.
As someone with anxiety and OCD, my hands are always fidgeting. When slime came around, I could spend hours at a time staring into nothing and playing with it. I was fascinated by the textures and the colors and found myself daydreaming about the different slimes I wanted to make.
And so I went to Hobby Lobby and bought my very first carton of Elmer’s Glue. (My parents didn’t know they’d be dooming our carpets to permanent stains from just this one bottle of glue.)
I loved everything about making slime. Crafting a blend that wasn’t too rubbery or sticky was addicting. Soon enough, I’d run out of Tupperware containers to put all my different slimes in, so I thought I’d give some to my friends. Before I knew it, they wanted in on making it too.
My friends and I would get together every weekend to buy more Elmer’s Glue and Sta-Flo, and pool our savings to get fancy clays and fake snow and charms to make more advanced slimes. My dad threw in a chemistry lesson or two whenever he came home and found me surrounded by colorful concoctions.
He talked about chemical reactions and ions, and why the glue and Sta-Flo combined so perfectly–and I absorbed every word, wanting to soak up anything and everything related to my latest obsession.
And of course, the next logical step was to start selling all the slimes I’d made. So I whipped up a fancy logo to draw on my containers and waltzed into school the next day with a cart-full of my creations.
With selling things comes money, and with money comes responsibility.
No longer would my parents buy my Elmer’s Glue. I needed to learn how to appropriately budget my profits to buy my supplies–and what money I could save for the future.
The slime business was booming within days. I was a little tornado, whirling around my house every afternoon to make more batches (yes, I’d upgraded to “batches”) of slime, leaving a sticky trail of destruction in my wake.
And what’s the next thing any 11-year-old does when they have something to brag about? Put it on the Internet.
I created cute Instagram accounts for my slime and my business–and even added a storefront to it. I was shipping slime around the country before I knew it.
That’s when my parents decided to put me and my business to the test: attending the Acton Business Fair, an event that supports kid entrepreneurs all over the world. I would get to present about my business, and I’d get a booth to sell my wares. Challenge accepted.
I printed out my logo stickers and flyers and bought my Elmer’s Glue and Sta-Flo and spent over 50 hours preparing.
I combined everything I’d learned to absolutely crush the business fair–practicing my introductory speech and writing descriptions of each slime. (It didn’t even matter that I was scared to talk to people. I was talking about the thing I loved.)
I ended up making hundreds of dollars from that little fair–and to this day that money is sitting in my desk in an envelope that says: What I earned from slime (2017).
How to use internet trends to teach life skills
Seriously: using trends as learning opportunities could change your kid’s life. I formed so many skills and had so many valuable experiences from my slime obsession that I couldn’t have had anywhere else. Your kid should get to have that, too.
How do you actually do that, though? you might be thinking. Well, there are four simple steps: