Friday, March 30, 2018

One Minute Blog: Learnings from a Recent Graduation Day Speech



I recently got a chance to speak at Illinois Institute of Technology's Graduation day. 

Sharing thoughts at an event like a graduation ceremony is usually the reflection of one's own lifelong learnings and experiences.

But this post is not about my speech. This is about the speech of my friend and mentor Tathagat Varma (TV), which I found quite inspirational. The detailed speech can be found here, but sharing quick summary and a sketch note as below.

His top three advise for graduating class were:

1. Be a Learner
   It is important to be a lifelong learner. If we sit on the laurels of the past, we are eventually destined to become irrelevant.

   The real "learning" will only happen when you start putting all that to practice and realize that there are things that you don't quite know, or you begin to question what was taught in the classroom.

2. Be a Maker
   If you want to continue being relevant in your careers, make sure you discard the charms of being a manager and simply adopt the seemingly-less sexy but more gratifying life of being a tinkerer, a builder, a maker.

3. Be a Giver
Education is an obligation, education is a responsibility...to give it back to the community, to enrich the society, to help those lesser fortunate than us to get an education.

I found this profound as this is applicable not only for the graduating class but also for everyone else. Thank you TV for this inspirational speech.



2 comments:

TV said...

Thanks Anuj....this is awesome stuff. You did much better justice to the topic with this visual than I did with my speech!

Anuj Magazine said...

Thanks TV, I enjoyed the experience of drawing this one while reinforcing the meaningful messages you shared.