President Simmons, faculty members, parents, and, above all, my fellow graduates: I am honored and humbled to stand before you today at the commencement for the class of 2012. I would like to seize this opportunity to thank you all for making my 4 years at Brown a meaningful experience. Like most of the graduating class, I've been through a tedious interview process throughout my senior year, and in almost every one of my interviews I was asked this question: "Describe yourself in three words." That was easy; I chose the three words that made me sound competitive. But now with you, I'd like to share the three words that reflect a more personal truth, the three words that run through my life. They are "luck, passion and dilemma".
On luck
For anyone who doesn't know me in person, I am an international student from Hong Kong. I attended a local Chinese language school for 11 years before I transferred to a United World College or what we call a UWC in 2006. Unlike most of you here, I'd never really dreamed of going to an Ivy League college, studying abroad, or even attending an international high school. All I wanted to do was to be a doctor in Hong Kong. My friend Wingkei Leung changed my life. It all began in March 2006. At that time I had already applied to the United World Colleges, and I was sitting in our assembly hall waiting for our Physics mock exam results. My friend Wingkei asked if I had submitted my UWC application forms, and my first reaction was like "didn't we do that 2 months ago?" He explained to me that the UWC had decided to replace a series of preliminary interviews with a set of supplementary applications - which were due the next day. I was like, "Oh crap, I didn't check my email!" I sprinted home, checked my email, wrote my essays and submitted the applications by the deadline. I was lucky and I got in. That was high school, but what about college? I applied to Brown simply because everybody at my high school was applying to US colleges. Since my boarding school was an SAT center, I just walked in one morning in my flip flops and completed the test. I ended up with only an 1800 on my SAT - and that placed me towards the bottom of our class. So I guess I wouldn't be here speaking to all of you if I hadn't been lucky.
There's no doubt that luck exists, but success through luck does not exist. We've all heard of the story about how Newton discovered gravity after an apple struck his head when he was resting under a tree. But is the story as simple as that? An apple might have indeed fallen on his head, but the apple was not solely responsible for Newton's conception of his second law of motion. Without imagination, he would not have pondered why the apple fell down instead of up; without knowledge in Physics, he would not have been able to link this to acceleration; without hard work, he would not have been able to utilize the findings of Galileo and other great scientists to come up with the concept of the gravitational force that keeps the moon in orbit around the earth.
Luck can open unexpected doors but luck is neither necessary nor sufficient for success. We've been fortunate enough to have developed a certain level of intelligence, creativity, and open mindedness through Brown's unique curriculum. We might not have learned a bunch of technical knowledge or skills, but we've been lucky enough to get into Brown, and earn a degree that stands out from the crowd. As we graduate together, I can't help but think of those less fortunate than we are who must choose between food and education. There are people who won't have access to a fraction of our opportunities simply because they are not born into privilege. Luck offers us the opportunity to work hard, but whether we take that opportunity is up to us. I therefore urge you to take advantage of the opportunities that lie ahead of you, and as we benefit from these opportunities, we must remember to create opportunities for others.
So that was luck. Passion requires more effort; you have to find the bastard.
On Passion
At the age of 16, I came upon this question on my UWC application: "Ideally, what do you dream that you might be doing in 10 years?" My childhood dream was to be a doctor because to me treating patients was the most direct way to make a difference in people's lives. I was determined to finish my pre-med requirements at Brown by the end of sophomore year. Stubborn, rebellious and hyper-competitive, I disregarded my Meiklejohn and advisor's advice and took 5 science classes in my very first semester. I survived and I was proud of myself for accomplishing something seemingly impossible - as a freshman, but at the same time I was confused. I wasn't sure anymore if medicine was actually for me. A year later, I was almost done with all my concentration requirements. But I was lost. I told my mum that I didn't like science like I did before. She told me to change my major but I decided to use my remaining course credits to explore different fields. I know I reversed the usual order of things, but I was raised under a Chinese academic system that forbade me to be content with an average or commonplace level of achievement. Like some of you, I was obsessed with getting perfect grades at Brown and proving myself as one of the top students in the class. I was scared to take classes that were outside my comfort zone. By the end of my sophomore year, however, because of my lack of passion for science and medicine, I could not bear the thought of taking 4 more years of classes in med school. I finally realize that passion is more important than mere recognition, and I decided to quit being pre-med.
A lot of times, we do the right things for the wrong reasons. We live in a world that defines success through achievements. Over the years, I've been "involved" in many activities. I was on the track and field team when I was 11, until I suffered from a cartilage inflammation that left me hospitalized for 3 months. I decided to switch to playing the violin since it didn't require the use my legs. I practiced hard and won many competitions in Hong Kong, but to be honest, I never really had a passion for it back then. It brought me recognition and respect, but not satisfaction. Then, I studied hard in high school so that I could get into a good college and hopefully become a great doctor. Despite the fact that I was drawn to this occupation because of the meaning of the work, deep down, I know that the real reason I wanted to go to med school was nothing noble. It was simply because of the social status, money, and job stability as a doctor. My life was constantly evolving; I drifted from one field to another because I was never content with what I was doing. Throughout my life, I succeeded and advanced through competition. This success was, however, transient. My sense of accomplishment was always lost as quickly as I gained it. In retrospect, I understand why I had such difficulty sticking with one thing - it was because I was chasing the wrong things. I was after achievements, recognition, status, and fame, rather than purpose and meaning. And you know what? I found it in the strangest place.
I mentioned that I dropped out of pre-med earlier, and I don't plan on staying in the scientific field, so you might wonder what I'm going to do with my Biochemistry and Molecular Biology degree. The answer is: I'm going to take up a Wall Street job. I had an internship at an investment bank over the summer, and discovered that I really like trading financial products. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm in love! This time luck dropped
an opportunity in my lap, and I took it even though it was outside my comfort zone. To be honest, I was scared because I had zero knowledge in econ and finance, but I told myself that I was not going to make the same mistake of being unwilling to change. Turns out, in order to find passion, it helps to plan less and try more.
You're all looking at me funny, because I'm about to join the 1%. But here's my dilemma: I've found my passion, but it doesn't allow me to give back the way I wanted my job to.
On Dilemma
I've started to ask myself a series of questions now that I've signed the contract: How can I add value to the community, the nation and the world through my job? Will I have to compromise myself to succeed at my job? Will I lose sight of what is truly important to me over time? I don't have any immediate answers to these questions, but we've been taught how to think. We have an intellectual toolbox that's designed to help us address knotty problems. What we have to remember is that thinking and learning do not end when we walk out of the Van Wickle Gates.
Here's my problem, I love my job, but my job doesn't have an avenue for community service. In order to make a contribution, I must pinpoint areas of need, and then match my abilities to those areas. Doing so requires me to be aware of both problems in my surroundings as well as my own capabilities. We have acquired critical and analytical skills in the classroom and now we are given a chance to apply them to our community and to ourselves. Often times, in the real world, we might overlook opportunities to learn from what others have to offer. For example, have you taken 5 minutes to talk to people like Maurice, the harmonica guy on Thayer Street, on a Friday or Saturday night? Or do you think there's nothing you can learn from him because he never attended college? The first time I spoke to him, I learned that his back pain was preventing him from working full time hours. That was my first encounter with concrete proof that the US Medicare system isn't good enough.
Open mindedness is not simply a quality that we demonstrate in seminar discussions. It's an act that includes an element of vulnerability. We won't truly demonstrate it until we free ourselves from the protective layers shielding us from acknowledging unpleasant problems that we don't want to attend to. I know that my job does not add value to humanity, so I have to contribute to my community through individual efforts. I will use the classroom skills I learned to cultivate awareness of the problems that exist around me. I will apply those classroom skills to develop self-awareness, to evaluate how I can help and to monitor the effect I'm having on the world.
It sometimes helps to be emotionally detached from situations, but ignorance of our community and ourselves is how we lose track of our compassion. Physiologically, we're all born with a negative feedback mechanism. When blood sugar levels rise after an excessive consumption of sugary foods, insulin will kick in and lower it to the normal levels. This regulatory mechanism should be present in our lives as well. It's hard to resist the negative aspects of the culture that we live in. We might lose track of our civic ideals, but as long as we remind ourselves of our environment and what it means to us, we can keep ourselves on track. So that's how I plan to be a trader and not act like one. Remember, it's not the form of your work that dictates who you are or what you can do with your life; it's how you engage the world that matters.
Thank you.
