{"id":21002,"date":"2024-04-30T17:23:38","date_gmt":"2024-05-01T01:23:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/?p=21002"},"modified":"2024-05-14T16:32:26","modified_gmt":"2024-05-15T00:32:26","slug":"aim-for-pluto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/aim-for-pluto\/","title":{"rendered":"Aim for Pluto"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Written by: Hannah Field | News Editor<\/span><\/p>\n

When prompted with the question \u201cWhere did the name Dr. Spice come from?\u201d Nishant Vashisht \u2014 the Dr. Spice in question \u2014 asked a follow-up: \u201cDo you want the real story or the fake story?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The fake story: \u201cThat\u2019s because I\u2019m the life of the party, man. That\u2019s why they call me Spice. The real story is in eighth grade. Me and my friends, we were a bunch of losers\u2026 I was like, we gotta create nicknames for each other\u2026 and I remember my mom would take this road all the time for work. Spicer Drive. And I don\u2019t know why, but something clicked in me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

At the time, Dr. Spice was merely a joke. He put it in his Instagram handle, and eventually, it spread to YouTube and TikTok, where he would amass over one hundred thousand followers.<\/span><\/p>\n

During junior high, Vashisht regarded that version of Dr. Spice as his outlet or alter ego.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDr. Spice was everything that Nishant Vishasht couldn\u2019t be,\u201d said Vashisht. \u201cDr. Spice started off as being a rapper, making music.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

At the time, the aspiring motivational speaker was being bullied for his low weight by his peers, a devastating hit to his self-esteem.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, Vashisht is a full-time content creator, working on building a personal brand and marketing himself. On top of that, he gained weight through proper means to add muscle, now brandishing a satisfactory frame and a toppling amount of confidence.<\/span><\/p>\n

On a daily basis, Vashisht wakes up at around 5 a.m. before taking a cold shower, working on video editing for a few hours, running to the library to read educational, motivational or self-help books and then visiting the gym, one of his favorite places.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnywhere I go to, there\u2019s young guys coming up to me and saying, \u2018Hey, Spice, let me tell you about what\u2019s happening.\u2019 And they\u2019re super happy to see me. Sometimes I reflect and it\u2019s like I became a beacon of hope to some of these guys,\u201d said Vashisht.<\/span><\/p>\n

Vashisht had become a bit of a local celebrity at his alma mater, West Albany High School, where he graduated in 2022. During his senior year, Vashisht organized a motivational club where he would speak to up to fifty students, encouraging them to \u201caim for Pluto.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAim for Pluto \u2014 I was doing a speech and I had maybe ten, fifteen people there, and we were talking about ambition. I just said this. Everybody aims for the moon, but I said f–k that,\u201d said Vashisht. \u201cWhy would I limit myself? My vision is to be big. So I\u2019m going to aim for Pluto, because if I fail, I\u2019ll land on a different planet.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

To him, Pluto represents being \u201cthe underdog.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPeople always thought of me as stupid, or talentless\u2026 if you look at my story, you look at everything I dealt with. It takes brutal determination,\u201d said Vashisht, referring to times when he was treated with blatant disrespect or racism due to his Indian heritage. \u201cMy story is for the underdogs. It\u2019s to inspire the weird guys, the lonely guys. (I\u2019m saying) hey, you can be better. You are the master of your fate. I feel like a lot of young guys resonate with me because I went from being like a stereotypical loser to now being the Chad.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

With Vashisht having clarified that he is not a psychologist, he speaks a lot on the human condition, especially from the perspective of a man. \u201cI major in bro science,\u201d said Vashisht, often divulging into male inspiration, strength, confidence and more in his lectures.<\/span><\/p>\n

His speeches are mostly freestyled, with inspiration drawn from various sources. Vashisht looks to his parents for guidance \u2014 his hardworking father who was often away at work during Vashisht\u2019s childhood \u2014 and his various teachers and educators who helped encourage and push him.<\/span><\/p>\n

One event, however, pushed Vashisht further. \u201cI got interviewed for the (high school newspaper) and the (principal) said, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s nice that you have your little club going on,\u2019 and she said it like it was a joke. I\u2019m the type of guy where I\u2019m very much motivated by proving people wrong. So I was like screw it, you know what? I\u2019m gonna prove you wrong.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In his words, it felt like she wasn\u2019t taking him as seriously as he expected. \u201cI deserve that respect,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

After that, he worked even harder to collect a vast audience for his next motivational speech by contacting people he didn\u2019t even know to attend via flyers and online postings. \u201cI ended up getting sixty-eight people, but my highest at the time was forty. I was just like, damn, I did this\u2026 that\u2019s one of my proudest moments to this day. I almost got seventy people to listen to me speak for five minutes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Vashisht has continued to aim for Pluto. \u201cWhat aiming for Pluto means in the simplest terms is there is no limit to my ambition.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Contact the author at howlnews@mail.wou.edu<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1094,"featured_media":21003,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1094"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}