Still draf - a working on process
My own Graduation Speech
Today, 31/07/2025, is a special day for me and all my friends as we mark the final day of our journey. I stand alone by the lake, watching white birds fly back to their home on the green island in the middle. They gather, sleepy, on the branches of the trees. Behind them, the late afternoon sky wears its most marvelous outfit, with a soft, deep blue backdrop making the purple and pink clouds appear even more radiant.
Despite this beauty, everything seems to darken, as if someone is dimming the light show of the sky. The sun sinks below, despite my wish for it to linger longer. But reality must press forward, like the sun must rise and set, just as the Fulbright cycle of admissions continues. Now, only night is left, a gentle breeze carrying with it the sighs of many of us—students who stand by the lake, gazing at the last sunset of our student lives.
In just ten minutes, everything will turn dark, signaling the end of our days here. My student life will be over. For four years, we have been here, witnessing 1,460 days of this beautiful sunset. Calculating this, 1,460 days multiplied by ten minutes each, then divided by sixty to find the hours, and further divided by twenty-four to find the days, yields approximately ten days of continuous sunset.
But most of those days passed by without realizing it because we were busy—not with attentive busyness, but with the busyness of thoughts. We did not experience the moments themselves but were caught up in thinking, feeling, and the concerns of the past and future. Yet, the true beauty lies in the reality that happens before our eyes.
Strangely, on our first day, we gathered from across Vietnam, from starkly different backgrounds. Some arrived with the privilege of being driven by their parents in cars, while others came by motorbike or even bicycle. Most of us, however, came on our own. We wore a variety of outfits—some in designer brands, some in casual wear, and I wore secondhand clothes. Some even reused their high school uniforms. My roommate, Bách, didn’t care at all; he walked barefoot everywhere on campus.
On our last day, outwardly, everyone dressed more formally—we had grown up—but at our core, we still wore the same clothes, as our personalities and social backgrounds remained unchanged. However, our minds and the way we perceive the world have changed.
Each of us heads back home in different directions. A few lucky ones walk hand in hand with someone, heading back to share home.
Our life here ends.
It will be sad when things end, but we will smile with new beginnings. Just as the sun must set and then rise, what is important is the lesson you take away, to start a better life. To do that, simply answer the following: What is the meaning of our days?
The liberal arts teach us flexibility and respect through engagement with a wide range of subjects, diverse professors, and teamwork with friends from various backgrounds. I believe we can synthesize adaptability in the face of life's circumstances and creatively handle them with interdisciplinary solutions.
That is why we head back to life, heads high.
Well, this is not just a question but the final assignment you need to complete because, without answers to these questions, your journey may feel meaningless. To address this, imagine I give you a pen to write on the palm of your hand a few key words that capture everything you’ve gained at Fulbright. What words would you choose to represent our passing days?
You might wonder why I choose to write on the hand. It is inspired by MIT's slogan, "Mind and Hand." We use our minds to think, but our hands are for acting. Therefore, finding the keywords of your journey—both as a student and in the experiences you have gone through—and writing them on your hand will remind you of the core values to guide your actions and build your future.
But it is more meaningful when we can do the exact assignment now.
I have prepared a pen for each of you in the audience, so you can spend the next two minutes in silence, writing a few key words that capture the essence of your student life here in the palm of your hand. This assignment is also for everyone else here, to find a few key words that reflect your life and use them as guiding lights to act. Write those in the palm of your hand. If anyone has trouble with this writing task, you can think about it in your mind and write with your symbolic hand.
For me, there are two words that I would tattoo on the palms of my hands: "Beauty" and "Gratitude." I have tattooed these words literally on my hands, with "Beauty" on my right palm and "Gratitude" on my left palm, to constantly remind myself of my core values as I think and act.
The first word is "beauty"—specifically, the beauty of all perspectives. The beauty I see lies in the pros and cons, contradictions, and the separation of people and social classes, as well as in the contrast between East and West. The West offers terms like scientific, analytical, and innovative, while the East provides words like introspective, holistic, and interdependent. As a Vietnamese, I consider myself more aligned with the East, and the guiding principles from my mother are "harmonize" and "love." My mother, who did not finish higher education, does not know English, and has never traveled outside Vietnam, is as wise as anyone here. In this context, she is as wise as Lao Tzu, who used these same two words to describe the essence of life. Just as water flows to the lowest point, nurturing and harmonizing all it touches, I want to choose "harmonize" as my life theory and "love" as my principle of life. Love is my standpoint for understanding everything.
The second word is "gratitude." Gratitude for my privilege of having the time and space to develop my knowledge. I am someone who has directly experienced the transformative power of changing perspective through exposure to knowledge.
Gratitude (Biết ơn) also embodies the intention of giving back (trả ơn). I genuinely want to be successful as the Western view, not only for myself but also to repay what society has given me. But I also want to be mindful, as Thầy Nam taught me about the East.
So, I also want to ask all of you here: What do you cherish from your learning experience here, and what will you do with it?