Offers students words of encouragement
Students and faculty at Texas A&M University-Kingsville lined up in front of the Jones Auditorium to listen to celebrity speaker and “High School Musical” star Lucas Grabeel. Before the seminar, select students were given the opportunity to have a one-on-one meet and greet with Grabeel and had the chance to take photos with him. Grabeel inspired the audience with his motivational words of encouragement about his struggles of revamping his acting career after the downfall of COVID-19 and all the challenges he faced during this time. “You know I think a lot of people are going through rough times right now, and I’ve been going through some rough times lately. I want to share that no matter where you are in your career or journey that you’re always going to have obstacles and problems are always going to come,” Grabeel said. “I hope that hearing me talk about the different highs and lows I’ve gone through in my career will help them live life and find pain in the pleasure.” This event brought excitement to the campus and students felt that the university did an outstanding job on selecting Grabeel as their guest star this year. “I was super excited. I think all these events TAMUK has had are such a cool opportunity to not only be with your friends but getting to meet special guests like Lucas,” student Jacqueline McClendon said. “I know we all grew up with this movie so it’s great that we get to see one of the characters and see what he has to say.” Grabeel gave the audience a sneak peek at his short film he recently filmed and poured his heart out to the crowd as he explained his love for acting and inspiring others around him. “I love sharing what I’ve learned with other people, and it may sound silly but when you do the same thing over and over you tend to forget about your journey and how you got there so inspiring others gives me the inspiration to do what I love,” Grabeel said. Student engagement and faculty had hopes that students would take advice and educational information from the seminar moving forward. “One thing that Lucas was super proud about is his art so I’m hoping that students can connect to some of the other pieces of work he’s done besides ‘High School Musical’ and maybe inspire a couple of students to pick up acting or film,” Student Engagement coordinator Kelsey Dahlbeck said.