As a person with a number of friends in various graduate schools, I know quite a few folks who're graduating this May/June. So, of course, I say to them, "Congrats!!" and look forward to seeing what they do with those fancy new letters after their names :)
But, I'd like to send a special shout out to my little sister Anjuli, who graduated from San Francisco State last Saturday.
Amazingly bright and insightful, she didn't really find that "spark" in high school. Uninspiring teachers, the pressures of stressed out parents and unfair comparisons to her siblings probably made it harder to focus on doing well academically than it should have been. If you didn't know her that well back then, you might have thought she was in big trouble.
You certainly wouldn't say that now.
So, what changed?
In short, she found one of the only things that really underlies success: passion.
Let's not kid ourselves. Quitting is, in today's very short-term society, often the easiest choice. Going from failing high school classes to being one of 12 honors students in the Psych program at a very large state school is damn near impossible. But she did it. She kept working at finding it, and when she did it, she even made it look easy.
I'd like to leave you this point:
I sincerely hope that we can all focus on finding that fire.
Be honest with yourself, make the pursuit of your true passions a continuous process and unleash your inner honors student.
I always knew she could. So proud. So very proud. Of all three of you. From the day you were born.
I knew you could
I knew you would
Posted by: KartofflMuter | June 03, 2007 at 04:56 PM