Commencement Speeches

Many of us would have watched and/or read Steve Job's "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish" Stanford 2006 Commencement speech. The speech stirs up a new vigor and determination each time one reads it. I came across this site which lists some of the best Commencement speeches delivered at various US universities in recent times. They make a good read, especially when one is felling lazy and direction less.

While most of these speeches are generalist in nature, I found the recent talk delivered by Joel Spolsky at Yale Computer Science department quite engrossing because mixes very well the specificities of earning a Computer Science degree with the generalities of software profession. My own graduation day is just 3 months away. I wish that someone could deliver a similar speech pertinent to MBA context on that occasion. There is still a lot I don't understand about how my professional and personal life will shape up as a result of my undergoing this curriculum. Need some honest soul to cut to the chase.

ERI

When one of my friends returned after spending a 5-day session at a village in Gujarat for a course called "Exploring Roles and Idenity", it was time to reverse the gyan flow for some time. The course is said to reveal profound insights about one's own self. I was eager to know some generic outcomes of the group discussions which took there. This is one of the revelations which hit my friend hard. And sure, it hit me hard as well when he described the same.

In his own words, "The unique thing about this world is that you will always find someone who is better at an activity you thought you are pretty good at. And this is not restricted to mainstream activities like academic performance or career achievements. I am also talking about trivial things. Like, some trick of hand, a particular bicycle stunt, a balancing act, anything. Why, even the most absurd of Guiness records are broken by somebody at some point. You would have never thought somebody would care to master that obscure a feat. But people do."

Just to show an example on a funny note

Surprise!

I am lucky to have access to a grand library. IIMA’s library boasts of a collection of more than 150,000 books. For a bibliophile, a well-organized library can probably mean no less than a temple. I am not a 5-star bibliophile. Yet, when my peers throng the discotheques or find a new restaurant to relish fine tastes for their pallet on a Saturday evening, I prefer to be on my own roaming between the tall aisles of the book stacks in the library. I can sense ‘a smell of the books’. An overwhelming feeling fills me at such a time – there is so much to read and so little time. A chastising voice from inside reminds me of the unfinished books I have as backlog. The MBA programme introduced me to book genres which earlier had not come to my attention. These combined with all the earlier genres I have been following now pose the problem of choice. Instead of picking up new books to read, I just read the titles printed in bold letters across the side of the book. It has become a dare to take out just one book from such a huge collection and not let my attention get diverted to another book with an equally promising title. Gradually, I had stopped finding books. The surprise came when instead the book found me! On one of the excursions among the many I took into the library, I chanced upon a book which looked conspicuously apart from its neighbors. The ‘uniqueness’ might have been in the title as well as the cover art, I am not sure what. The subject matter just kept me hanging on as I read through the initial few pages. The reviews available on Internet confirmed that the book was a definitive work of the genre it was part of. I immediately got the book issued. A few happy reading hours after, I had added a new book genre to my kitty. It would be more difficult now to make my choices between the books, but I was not complaining. And as if to prove that this may be the only way for me to pick up new books, similar incident happened again after a month. Another random book picked and fallen in love with. How I wish that same luck would play in meeting people! Next time you do not find me answering my phone, you know which alleys I am wandering through. Some book out there is waiting for me to find it!