Why are you here?

I was invited as Chief Guest for the Inauguration of First Year BTech, BBA and BCA Programs for the Academic Year 2018-90 at the PES University. There were over 600+ students and their parents, families and well wishers to cheer them up on their new journey for the next four years. Here is my speech to them titled "Why are you here?" (the exact speech came out a bit different, as I realized, yet again, that I am a natural orator and can never follow a prepared speech, but then the effort of getting up at 3am and actually writing down this speech was well worth all the effort!)

Find your real purpose / discover your true passion

Why have you come here? Maybe some of you think you deserve to be here because you are so good. In fact, it is even likely that some of us have a deeply ingrained sense of entitlement that we are actually offended by this question! We think the answer is so obvious that such a dumb question should not even be asked. Obviously, I am so good, and that’s why I am here!

First of all, I would urge you to reconsider that opinion in case you happen to think on those lines. I know it is extremely difficult at your age, because I was your age once, and still sometimes continue to behave like one even now! At your age, we think we won because we deserved to win, and if we lost, it is because others played rough and unfair! So, let’s set the record straight for everyone. To begin with, all of you were incredibly lucky to win the genetic lottery – you were blessed to be born to your parents and to have access to probably the top 10% education and family values and social context and schools that gave you the primary education and teachers that groomed you and so on. Imagine millions of people in our own country, and many times more around the world who are born in abject poverty, into a world where the new day only means go out and work more so that you could survive through the day. And all that at a tender – and illegal age of work when you should be at school. And if that is not enough, some illness or a family situation will stop the dreams in their tracks! So, I am sorry to say that but you reaching this stage here today is not entirely your own achievement. It is the countless number of selfless sacrifices made by your parents, your community, your teachers, your neighbors, your friends, the support staff in your home or school, and many others…and if any of them had put their own interest above yours, I am sure you would not be sitting here today. So, the first thing we need to learn is to be humble and be grateful. Don’t take this achievement as an “entitlement” – I mean yes you should obviously be proud of what you have accomplished, but don’t let that go to your head.

Now that we have taken care of entitlement, maybe some of you came here because you have a passion for doing what you have chosen, but it is equally possible that many others came here because of parental expectations or pressure, or peer choice, or just following the market trend. But is that good enough reason to be here?

You need to go out and discover what really excites you, what is it that you would like to do for yourself, for your society, for your country? Imagine if you had all the money you needed, or maybe no one was going to pay you anymore – what would you want to do? 

So, how does one discover their passion? There is no easy cookbook answer, but there are a number of things one could do. First of, many of you might have a limited exposure at this stage. You need to go out and acquire the “dots” so that over time, you can learn to “connect them”. Secondly, you are a lucky generation who will see very interesting confluence of humans and machines working together in many fields of life. As Indians, you are also lucky that you will lead us into industrialization of our massive society. With so much at stake, there is no way you are going to be able to do it if your heart is not in what you are doing!

When I look at my own career, I realized that my true calling is in sharing my knowledge and helping others become better. I started with blogging, and then have taken my passion to teaching and public speaking. I do over 30 public talks each year, and have been doing it for over ten years now, and each talk gives me an immense sense of satisfaction of working towards my purpose.

Learn by doing / be a maker

You’ve joined your higher education at a very interesting time. One on hand, our nation and society is poised for unprecedented growth opportunities for the next 15-20 years, and on the other hand, we have a situation that last year alone, almost 50% of the seats in engineering colleges went empty. These are hundreds of engineering colleges that are on the verge of closure, and there are thousands of engineers fresh out of college who have a degree but not a job. They know their subjects, within the constraints of whatever their college and the faculty could teach them, but they have not taken the effort to apply that classroom learning into developing real-life skills. That is a real shame.

In the next four years, you will be exposed to literally hundreds of new ideas. You are blessed to be at among the best colleges in the country that has built a formidable reputation to produce excellent students. Your college reputation will probably help you open the doors. But will this degree help you get the job you aspire for? Most likely all of you will get some jobs, that is almost a given. But is that what you want to do? Would the job inject you with energy every day, or leave you exhausted at the end of the day? Can you imagine yourself getting up at 6 every morning and then trudging along in Bangalore’s crazy traffic day after day for a job that you actually hate?

The only way to avoid that painful agony would be to make some simple rules for yourself starting today. First is to augment and amplify your learning classroom learning with doing! Say, if you learnt about a cantilever bridge, then go out and build a primitive cantilever bridge and question if you understood the ideas? Then go and make some changes to it that were not taught in the classroom, and now again question if you can explain what is happening? Until you have questions based on your own experiences that you can’t explain, you have not even started the process of learning. Classroom learning is only 25%, and if you can do what I just told, then your learning is now close to 50%.

Next step is to find a real-world problem where you can apply your newfound learning and help solve a pesky problem. Too many of us are busy chasing some nice-looking romantic problem, but don’t realize that the best problems are lying at our feet, and just waiting to be “discovered”. If you can solve those problems, your learning will go up to 75%. This is what I mean when I say that knowledge is a powerful weapon – it should be used to help people and serve the society.

Finally, there is no use of a knowledge, skill or learning if it was only kept to yourself. I have always believed that knowledge and learning, and especially higher learning such as what you are about to undergo is an obligation. When we get educated, we become responsible to give it back to the society, to the community around us, to the lesser privileged among us. Your learning will only be 100% if you have used that power to selflessly illuminate other’s lives – not just by helping them but actually transforming their lives by giving them the knowledge, the skills, the ability and most important – the courage and faith that with that power, they van go and build their lives and future. You can count yourself educated only if your education has been of value to others who might have not had the same opportunity.

When I look at myself, continuing the example of finding my interest area in project management, creativity, culture, and so on. I started blogging in 2006, started teaching in 2008, started public talks, and eventually published a book in 2015, and even did my own startup gig for three years. To me, a maker doesn’t mean building physical things only, but creating something of value to the society, and go through the process of learning and have fun while doing that.

Stand out / don’t fit in

Take a look at the natural world around us. All Ashok trees look almost the same, and all sparrows look the same. Probably all tigers look alike and all dolphins look like a copy of each other. Perhaps human being are the only species that don’t look alike. And there lies the most important lesson. I don’t know why, but I believe that Mother Nature has created humans differently. Just like our physical appearance is meant to be unique, so are our mindsets, our personalities, our capabilities and our respective talents. What’s the point here – that we were, that you were created to stand out. We are all limited-edition masterpieces whose mould was destroyed soon after we were born so that no one else shall be born who is exactly alike in all sense of the word. Now what does that mean?

It means don’t try to copy the herd. Don’t follow the trend simply because everyone else is doing. The groups are known to have no mind of its own, and hence you are most likely to end up in mediocrity if you took the beaten path. If you were born as human being, then you were simply not meant to fit in, but rather stand out. Those who fit in, I call them labor because they can only do what everyone else can do. And do you know something – machines and robots love those kind of humans – in fact, I call them “human machines”. They are the easiest to replace! Don’t do that to yourself. But rather, discover your inner strengths, your real potential, your real purpose, your real identity that makes you unique even among seven billion of us. I call that talent. You need to discover it and develop it to its true potential.

In my life, I made very unconventional choices. When I was just 23 years old and working as a Computer Scientist, I volunteered to participate in Antarctica expedition and chose to stay there for 16 months. I didn’t choose to go to US as many of my classmates and friends had chosen to do, but rather I pursued something different and unique that I could relate to. And it has changed my perspective forever. There was obviously a physical part of living in -30 Centigrade for sixteen long months, but the bigger learning was my ability to relate to human beings and deal with psychological and sociological problems of working and living together in such a remote “big boss” kind of house.

How do you do that? Again, we are all unique and different, and hence there can’t be a one-size solution to it. But some things could help. First of, go out and learn as possible about the world – different cultures, different people, travel to far and wide, learn languages, eat different foods, acquire experiences from various art forms, learn different subjects, learn to appreciate differences and diversities, and so on. Chances are if you did this for a reasonable period of time, you will stumble upon something that touches your heart. It might be building shelters for stray dogs, or it might be empowering the underprivileged, or it might be helping the people under stress, …whatever you choose is your choice and as long as you have a deep sense of conviction about it, it doesn’t really matter what others think of it. Don’t settle for lowly “achievement” like a well-paying job with a well-known company or a cool-sounding title. These are ephemeral.

The only true sense of contention and happiness comes with us being able to relate to a purpose much bigger than ourselves and the ability to contribute to it and make a meaningful difference to people around us. That is your true talent, and that’s what you were born to do. Pursue that and stand out rather than fitting in.

Handle pressure / develop resilience

One of the biggest shocks to freshmen is when they enter a high-performance pool such as your elite institution. Most of you got straight As in high school, and were probably in the top 10% or 20% of your class. And now you are all together and your competition is with someone else who also has the same intellectual level as you. Obviously, there can’t be two toppers! So, many of you are going to face something that you have probably never faced before – B and C grades, and some of you might have never seen such grades in life. Don’t sweat too much over your grades. I am not saying that grades are not important, but don’t let those grades define you.

What you need to do is to learn how to cope with pressure and develop resilience. These grades are only the start of your professional career, where you will face increasingly amount and levels of pressure – quite often things would be outside your control, and there is no way you could afford to walk out of every situation. So what are you going to do? It is not important if you faced rejection or even ridicule. What is most important is what you do with it? Take the blows on your chin, and go back and analyse what just happened. Were you really well-prepared for that exam, or you just thought you are this cool dude who would simply ace it with ease? Did you practice well enough for that viva, or you just thought you could impress the examiner with some clever demos? You need to develop the capability to do such thorough analysis and provide yourself some honest feedback! And if you don’t trust yourself, then find some good friends – not the ones who only say good things just to make you happy but those ones who are willing to tell you the truth that you probably know but don’t want to face!

On the topic of friends, I want to share one very important perspective. This is probably the last chance that most of you will make lifelong bonds. Trust me, once you are in job, you don’t make friends. So, make good friends – a good friend is not just someone you want to hang out with, but also the real “3am friends” – you know the ones you can trust and depend on completely. They are the friends who know you better you family and parents and even better then you! They could be outright brutal in giving you the feedback when you deserve to get a liberal dose of reality, but could be ultraprotective when you need it most! Not only do you feel happy hanging out with them, but even they feel equally happy hanging out with you. Choose such friends and build a trusted social circle. You can face any challenge in life with them!

On this topic, I want to share something that I learnt, and keep learning from my son. He went to college in 2015, and I my wife thinks he is very good at handling pressure and setbacks. This was the first time he was out of home, and that too to US, and it has been a huge learning for him as well as for us as well. He has had all kinds of settling down challenges – getting mugged and losing the brand-new laptop, having a knee surgery to finding internship opportunities and interviewing Nobel Laureates. As a parent, we couldn’t have prepared him for all these challenges and opportunities, but we are glad he had developed a mindset that helps him cope with all those challenges, and has a circle of friends who make life fun.

To conclude

You are entering the best phase of your life. You will never get these years back, so make best use of them. You will face lots of ups and downs – the ups that will make you feel that you are invincible, and the lows that will make you want to cry like a baby. Stay strong and have fun.