Thoughts from a College Drop-Out

"humanity's greatest advances are not in its discoveries but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity...reducing inequity is the highest human achievement"


-BILL GATES
spoken at the 2007 Harvard University Commencement.


Early this morning I watched a series of clips of Bill Gates' Harvard commencement speech. It's a five-part series with clips ranging from 5 to 6 minutes each, making the whole speech roughly around half an hour long. The first few parts were funny anecdotes and then he got to the core of what he really wanted to discuss. And because of the duration of the talk, it couldn't be helped that some of the audience got bored (or if they weren't they certainly looked like it from the video). I liked the whole speech in general. I never knew that Bill Gates was such a philanthropist and a humanitarian. Well with tons of cash, he should be (tons of cash is an understatement). Kudos to him for giving out a talk which doesn't normally follow the usual pattern of graduation speeches wherein the speaker patronizes the university or gives the graduates some jaded advice on how to face the real world, advices which after a year or two become unusable and forgotten. Instead, Gates talked about conquering humanity's biggest problem and our biggest issue. Caring is simply not enough. I loved how with all honesty he challenged the audience to look for a problem, cut through the complexities and work for a solution. I think the message is so timely, with the current earthquake disaster hitting Japan. And I thank him for giving out that message, and although he didn't speak to me directly, his speech made me realize what I really want to do in my life. It fuelled my passion which I've been looking for so long. It fortified my belief that the path I'm going to take within the few months is really the right path for me. I know it is. :)

Part 1 of the speech can be watched here and the rest can be found on the same site as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP5VIhbJwFs&feature=fvwrel

Go ahead.
Be inspired.