Tag: graduation

Career Advice 2024

July 19, 2024

At Reser Stadium, Oregon State University, in Corvallis, OR, ex-OSU football player Steve Jackson delivered a commencement speech that was more than just advice. It was a call to action, a call to travel and discover oneself. The stadium was hushed as the students absorbed Jackson’s powerful message, drawn from his own transformative experiences.

 His speech resonated deeply with the audience and earned the roaring applause of the 7,600 graduating students and forty thousand family and friends in the stadium on June 15, 2024. We were in the audience to watch our grandson graduate in engineering.

Jackson started his speech by asking the students: what is your next step? The NFL drafted Jackson before graduation, and he did not have to think about the future until he became disappointed with his team and concerned about his long-term career. His concern led to travel each year when the team was off-season. This narrative structure, which began with a personal anecdote and then transitioned into the central theme of travel, effectively engaged the audience and set the tone for the rest of the speech.

He traveled alone or in small groups to meet local people in foreign countries who did not know he was a well-known football player in the US. He said his travels made him find his strengths and increased his confidence in resolving challenges when he came home. The challenges did not become any easier; they remained the same. However, he discovered that he became better at solving problems based on what he learned traveling.

He recommended travel, including adventures like he had paragliding over Iguazu Falls in Argentina and cage-diving with great white sharks.

Another adventure was to build water wells in Tanzania as part of a team to help that country with its water problems. The tour also included climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, an extremely demanding physical hike. He described that when the group climbing the mountain was a hundred meters from the top, he looked back and saw his friend struggling to walk further, weakened by the thin air at this high altitude. Although he was steps away from the top, he decided to return to help, and both scaled the summit together. Jackson said teamwork is essential in achieving goals, but helping his friend was a moment of self-discovery in understanding your strengths and empathy for others.

Listening to Jackson reminded me of my travels to the Middle East and Southeast Asia with my wife. We backpacked, taking the less traveled paths and taking advantage of learning about local cultures, being observant, and talking to people. I fully agree with Jackson; when traveling, you leave your daily routine and identity behind as much as possible and instead open your mind and eyes.

For instance, we stumbled upon the rat temple in India, where you enter barefoot and are surrounded by over 25,000 rats (Karni Mata in Rajasthan). The full-time staff’s dedication to feeding and supporting these rats is a testament to the temple’s religious significance. It was a sight we could never have imagined before our travels.

We also saw an exquisitely carved Jain temple, where we had to shed all leather goods (materials that come from living things), like my belt, to enter. Other requirements were no shoes, socks, or food, and women could not enter during their menstrual cycle.

In Moslem Jordan, we learned that all room service staff were men; women are prohibited from working in such spaces. Instead, Egyptian immigrant men are doing this work.

In Bangladesh, we encountered a combination of urban poverty, crowding, and working conditions that do not exist in North America; for example, we saw fifteen people sewing shirts in a closed, windowless space of two hundred square feet with one lamp and no AC, working in temperatures of over ninety degrees in Pune, India. We also experienced a hundred-mile, four-hour car trip.

Returning from our trips, we have become more tolerant and understanding of different cultures. We looked at our issues at home from a larger perspective; for example, we did not think our highway congestion was terrible compared to the roads around Pune.

Mind you, we traveled when we were older, unlike what Jackson recommended in his speech to new graduates. And we were not looking for our future careers. However, travel is educational at any stage in life and can help focus people’s lives, so I thought Jackson’s speech was helpful to new graduates.

But remember that young people want to get on with their careers and look for a job before considering traveling. One also needs some funds to travel. So, although I agree with the premise that travel opens your mind and assists with figuring out your career, most young people fall into the job market after graduation, often marry and establish a family before thinking about travel that needs some funds and free time. Considering these practical challenges when evaluating the relevance of Jackson’s advice is essential.

With his newly minted diploma, my grandson, Cedric, had already secured a job in San Francisco before he heard Steve Jackson. Many of his friends had also obtained jobs before graduation. However, the message may linger with them, and between future job changes, they may travel. For those graduating with no immediate plans, by all means, go on a trip and find yourself. That was Steve Jackson’s message.

My Takeaways from a Graduation at Georgia Tech. in Atlanta

May 26,2023

We drove from Ottawa to Atlanta, a distance of close to 2000 kilometers, to see our granddaughter, Susanna, graduate in architecture at Georgia Institute of Technology.

How could we miss our granddaughter’s graduation? We did not but made me think we have a grandson graduating next year in Oregon; a granddaughter graduating, I think, in Colorado in two years, and another grandson graduating in Virginia the year after. Should we follow this precedent, that would be quite a travel plan for the next few years! Unfortunately, we missed the graduation of our eldest granddaughter who graduated from the University of North Carolina during the Covid shutdown.

Arriving in Atlanta during rush hour, exciting enough, was made even more challenging when we missed our destination, despite using Google Maps on my cell phone. The Google Map showing arrival in seconds just before my wrong turn, suddenly turned into seventeen minutes and a fifteen-mile drive. My four-letter word vocabulary quickly expanded, but it did not help. We had to get back on the interstate and circle back.

In the meantime, my son, Tony, was messaging us inquiring about our whereabouts. By the time we arrived back to where we should have turned left, Tony was standing on the street corner waving to us to be sure to make the left turn to arrive at our hotel, the Midtown Garden Hilton. 

The hotel was within walking distance of the Bobby Dodd Stadium in Atlanta, where the 2023 commencement exercises took place, and we walked to the stadium early in the morning.

The closer we got to the stadium, the more people joined us, forming a veritable migration by the time we stopped at the entrance to the stadium where a metal detector gate let people through, one by one. The only items allowed to be taken in were cameras, cell phones, and wallets, and I noticed that some people sported a new and useful product to enter metal detector gates: a plastic see-through purse carried by women.

The wall-to-wall crowd at the entrance gate exuded enthusiasm, I heard people talking proudly about their offspring getting a university degree from one of the elite institutions in the United States. Many of them were formally dressed while others donned jeans. We wore casual, informal clothing matching the early summer weather.

Once inside, we saw the graduating class sitting in rows of chairs in the middle of the stadium floor, facing the end of the football field, where a covered podium was constructed, above which a huge TV screen showed the action on stage. By the time we walked around the stands to the front, close to the podium, the stadium was a third full of its 55,000 capacity. The buzz in the air was loud and palpable, and we had to shout to communicate.

All the best seats were taken, especially those with a backrest. So, we rushed forward, up a few levels, and then down, trying to find seats from where we could take the best pictures of the President shaking hands with the graduates one by one, congratulating them on their achievement. We even found private boxes which had a good view of the ongoing events, but these rooms were glassed in, and we could not hear clearly what went on downstairs. After investigating the layout of the stadium and searching for good seats, we took seats close to the front of the football field.

Although it was not pronounced, I detected a slight accent listening to university president, Angel Cabrera’s introductory speech. He hails from Spain and received his Ph.D. from Georgia Tech in 1995, a nice elevation from student to president in twenty-four years. The Glee Club sang the national anthem following Dr. Cabrera’s speech.

Harrison Butker, the commencement speaker, surprised or perhaps shocked the audience with his recommendation on what the graduating students should do with their lives: he said they should get married and have a family. Now Harrison is not only an NFL hero, a football player with the Kansas City Chiefs, who wears two Super Bowl Rings, but also a Georgia Tech graduate who played football for the university. But his advice on how to conduct your future life created a stir in the audience; my other two granddaughters, college-age, immediately reacted with: “Who is he to tell me to get married? And you do not have to be married to have a family!”

Harrison’s argument centered on what he called the loneliness experienced by today’s youth, despite the connectedness people think they have through social media. He said you will not be happy with whatever you accomplish unless you share it with someone. To him, the sharing was with his wife and family that motivated him today and made him happy.

I thought Harrison was entertaining when he talked about teamwork and perseverance but disappointed when he brought religion into the commencement address, by recommending marriage. But his comments were no surprise, Harrison is a devout catholic and belongs to a conservative group that promotes the practice of an older version of Catholicism, including the belief that sermons should be in Latin.

Dr. Cabrera thanked Harrison for his speech and wondered aloud, with understated humor, how many marriage proposals would take place today.

The graduates were called onto the stage, to shake hands with the president, and proceed to pose before the “Rambling Wreck”, for an official photo. (The Rambling Wreck is a fully renovated Model T Ford, the school’s mascot that is driven around the stadium before each football game.)

The activity on the stage was projected onto the large screen above it for us to see each graduate walk by with their name on the screen.

I was dumbfounded in the beginning, seeing all the Asian and South Asian names following one after the other; of the first fifty graduates called to the podium, I counted twenty-nine Asian names. What is the ethnic composition of the student body here, I asked myself. According to recent statistics, twenty percent of the students are Asian or South Asian. Then I realized that the first to be called were the computer science graduates.

Much as I tried to get ready to take pictures of Susanna when she came by the Rambling Wreck, I had both my camera and cell phone ready, I missed the perfect shot. The pictures I took are out of focus. No matter. We joined up with her after the ceremonies at the architecture building, and took some pictures of her in her gown, along with family.

To celebrate her life milestone, the family went for dinner at NoMas! Cantina. The Cantina served Mexican fare in a space furnished with artifacts from Mexican artists, all of which are available for purchase. A unique place. I thought it was funky with umbrellas hanging from the ceiling, and masks and artifacts decorating the walls. Consistent with the Mexican theme, we started with a margarita, served in a two-foot-tall glass bottle, bulging at the bottom. It was sufficient for eight people.

The dinner punctuated a successful four years of study. So what is next Susanna? I asked. Following a stint with a large architectural firm in Atlanta this summer, she said she will attend Clemson University in South Carolina to study for a master’s degree in architecture.