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Graduation Day | Chief Guest Talk | Summary


Good Afternoon.
Principal, Professor Pawar.
Faculty and Staff,
and most especially those students graduating today.

It is indeed an honor and a great pleasure to be here amongst you to share this important occasion with you. It is not often that I get an opportunity to share space which has a very low mean age! I would like to thank your principal Professor Pawar for this kind invitation.

First, I would like to congratulate each and every graduand. This is a great and a memorable moment for all of you. It is a day of celebration – a day when you can look back on the many challenges you have overcome, and also look forward to those challenges that lie ahead, knowing that you have the necessary skills and knowledge to tackle them.

It is a day to remember your teachers who have equipped you with the skill and made you a fine engineer. It is also a day to thank your family, especially you parents who have put your interests before their and have sacrificed their own interest. It is time especially to thank your mother, who stood and will stand behind you come what may. With such solid support there is nothing but a bright future for you ahead.

What this means is remember your parents, teachers. Respect them. They are a rich source of inspiration, source of wisdom which you should tap.

You are the new digital citizens, the blessed ones, the ones that has a good technology advantage, the one that has access to information at your finger tips. I face the same dilemma that your teachers face when they have to lecture you in a class room, knowing very well you might be aware of what they are going to teach you. I thought it is best to talk about little things that I think are important in a journey called life, straight from my heart.

Education has given you a chassis and a little bit of fuel. You need to maintain the chassis from rusting, meaning you need to keep constantly unlearing and learning; the day you decide to stop learning would mean the chassis would rust. The way you shape the chassis, the way you build the body on top of the chassis, the way you steer is entirely in your hands. You can make the final product, society friendly by using better fuel (may be electric) or use what is available and leave the world in the same state. Education has give you the bit, use it well.

Opportunities are plenty, unlike couple of years ago more of less like Google search that yields a lot of data. But you need to pick your information from this data. You are blissfully in a "Problem of plenty" situation. It is for for you to make best use of it.

Just because no one paved a path does not mean that it is a task not worth trying or pursuing. Always Dream Big, follow your heart and make your own path.

Luckily for you, businesses are keeping things ready for you. They are building collaboration platforms which will help you transition from your student engineer status to a professional engineer with very less hiccup. They have done away with email and gotten in whatsup like communication channels. They are gearing up to enable workplaces, called agile spaces, which can allow mingling of machine and humans work together. The enterprises are making things ready for you. You need to grab it.

AI nothing to worry, There are many tasks to be accomplished. Find a passion and immerse in it.  Always Give your best, however small the task. And importantly believe in yourself and your ability.

India is indeed a great place to be in, things that work elsewhere need not work in India, but things that work in India will work elsewhere example self driving cars.

You can now pave your own road and the road for the future of India.

Keep yourself emotionally fit. What you see in Facebook is just a phase in someones life not the entire life, let that not drain your mood. Make it a point to visit the people who you love, respect once in a while irrespective of the distances. How many times we have heard of "we stay in the same city but have not met for a decade now"! Let that not be your line too.

Be yourself. Everyone is unique. Eat healthy, Sleep well, Have a 2 am friend. Be a good citizen. It is not too early to think what kind of planet you will leave behind, seize the opportunity and pave the path. It is in your hands to leave behind a healthy and a happy world.

“Education,” it is said, “is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Now it is up to you to prove to it.

Congratulations again.
Wish you great health and God bless you!

Comments

Unknown said…
Great inspirational talk!!

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