There are places and moments in our lives in which our futures are decided. Many are sights we either would rather forget, or can’t remember: State Street and The Rat, Parade Day and Bar Crawl. Others are sights that symbolize and exemplify our character: student-organized protests, student clubs, Lecture Halls and all-nighters in the library.
Binghamton University is a transformative place.
We were brought here to develop perspective and to find our own path, and after years of hard work and dedication, we are so close to the end. We tend to think of perspective in terms of the classes we’ve taken, but I believe that the most important perspective has been taught between the hallways and outside the lectures.
As a freshman, everything interested me, but nothing held my attention. Truth be told, I was not enjoying my time here. I made friends easy enough and my classes were enlightening, but there was nothing I was passionate about. I had not found my North Star.
Eventually, to what can only be attributed to sheer, dumb luck, I found something that gave my time here meaning. I became a TEDxBinghamtonUniversity organizer. Now, I could talk about TEDx all day, but for the sake of brevity and to not further annoy my editor, I will summarize my TEDx experience as follows with a quote from Paul Buchheit: “To create something that a few people love, even if most people don’t get it right away.” In that spirit, I’ve decided to share the wisdom and experiences that matter to me, with the hope that it will reach the right person. This is, after all, a world defined by outliers.
My first tidbit of advice is somewhat odd, but please, I implore you: Dare to be vulnerable. I know this seems to go against conventional norms, but vulnerability is important. To be vulnerable is not to be weak; rather, to be vulnerable is to be susceptible to all possibilities. We tend to associate vulnerability with pain, but vulnerability gives us our humanity. It allows us to feel empathy and compassion and to connect to one another. Our greatest strength is not our ability to overpower or outsmart one another; it is our ability to understand one another.
My second bit of advice is to act with conviction. This one is a lot tougher than the first. There are no shortcuts in life. Trust me, I’ve looked. There will be countless obstacles that make you question your choices every single day, but don’t let dreams be dreams. Work at them, become obsessed with them and chase them until you can’t push any more. The only difference between you and someone you admire is hard work. Don’t get me wrong, natural talent takes you a long way, but there is a lot of wasted talent in this world, so capitalize on that fact and hit the ground running.
My last bit of advice is to learn to be comfortable with uncertainty. Don’t follow a pre-existing path and don’t look to imitate your role models. No two experiences are the same — they may be similar, but they are never the same. Do not be afraid to carve your own path, however unorthodox it may be. Sometimes the best decisions in life are the ones you understand the least. We live in an interesting time and though I’m sure every generation thinks so, we are the first to see it unfold so rapidly.
I’d like to thank my housemates for making college so memorable. A huge shout-out to the Murray squad for being a bunch of saucy spunions, I seriously love you guys so much. I can’t wait for Basslights 2015.