STUDENTS – KEYNOTE ADDRESS.
Although we can’t help you write your thesis, we can certainly get it ready for submission! First though, we check it to make sure it is up to our high standards before it is ready for collection.
But before you step out into our big, troubled world, we want to pass along a piece of advice. Earning a college certificate is one of the most impressive and greatest accomplishments of life. But success as hard as each of you have worked and have achieved today, there is still more outside the lecture halls. We are all the product of a community, a village, and a team!!
So either way, graduates, you’ve got to go out and do really interesting things, important things, inventive things, because this world, real or imagined, this world has some problems that we need you to drop everything and solve. Human beings will take your breath away. They will teach you so much but you have to engage and learn.
Whatever your answer, it’s not going to be easy. Sometimes your work will hit a dead-end. There’s a lot of trouble out there. But there’s a lot of beauty, too. And we hope you see both!!
Wherever you go from here, and whatever you do in the future, you will participate in a world that is becoming increasingly globalized. You will interact directly and indirectly with others just like you across the far reaches of the world. They will represent families, colleagues, competitors, customers.
As you enter this new world, remember this. As powerful and as progressive market rationality constitutes, it is not a sufficient basis for human solidarity. It must be coupled with an ethic of caring for those whom the market disadvantages, an ethic of responsibility, an ethic for tolerance for those whom the market pits as your adversary.
The certificate you earn today is one of the most elite credentials that a 21st Century College has to offer. That degree is a social contract. It calls on you to devote your talents and energies to honoring others.
Today for the first time in human history, success requires no prerequisite of wealth or capital. Today success can be created solely through the power of one’s mind and ideas encouraged. Unlike yesteryears, today intellectual capital can be cultivated and instantaneously distributed across the globe. Intellectual capital has become the new currency of the 21st Century.
No matter what profession you choose, you must become a community builder by acknowledging the role of social responsibility. You’re responsible for building strong safe places where future generations grow in confidence even as you watch and learn from positive role models. Help those around you see the beauty of this vast world. Help them believe that they too can capture that dream. And remember community can be anywhere.
Decades ago community was a few meters around where we grew up. Today though, at the click of the button, we can create communities of people all around the world instantly. Merging the physical and digital societies will be one of the greatest opportunities that you have today.
Finally, don’t forget that communities thrive in the smallest of gestures. Be the first to congratulate a friend on their new job. Buy their new product posted on social media and tell everybody how great it is and be the first to console them when they face adversity.
Treat all people with dignity even if you can’t see how they’re going to help you. Remember, what you say matters and what you say carries with it enormous power. Be intentional about the words you speak, how you define yourself, what you call each other, the people you spend time with and the love you create. This all matters immensely, it will define you.
Let the quality of your work products speak of your capabilities. Know that you are only bound by the limits of your own conviction. There is no room on this earth you can’t enter with your head held high. But when you respect your own work, that’s all the respect you need.