Inspired

Yesterday my boss made us all attend the Inauguration of the 11th Purdue president France A. Cordova (3rd from the left, wearing the medallion). I think she is the first woman president at Purdue, and her CV is pretty darn impressive. The best part I like about it is that she was an English/Anthropology major in college, and then made a complete switch to Astrophysics in grad school, eventually being a chief scientist at NASA and an award-winning astrophysicist. Her story reminds me of what I once read on a greeting card: Its never too late to be what you could have been.

In her speech, she quoted Gandhi: You must be the change you wish to see in the world. Its not the first time I've heard this quote, but it is the first time its significance really struck me. In the past I never felt I was capable to executing any change, but now.. I feel more and more empowered and confident of myself with every day that I stay in the USA.

Lets put it this way. I'm not a conformist and thats probably why I didn't fit in in Singapore. Maybe other people like the comfort of predictability, routine and uniformity, but it just didn't work for me. I didn't like being told by my bosses or teachers, look here's a paint-by-numbers picture of a horse, go join the dots. And they say, oh tell me what you think I love hearing new creative ideas, but they don't mean it. If you ever try something different, they'd say, oh thats very interesting but why don't you edit this edit that, until eventually, GUESS WHAT? You end up with the very same picture you would get if you joined the dots in the first place! Then you end up feeling uber-frustrated for wasting all that time, your talents going to waste, and for having the boringest job in the entire world. A primary school kid could have done that!

So yeah, I really appreciate it in America. I thank God every day that I can draw any type of horse I want, the more different the better. In fact I can even go ahead and draw a unicorn, as long as I have a rationale behind it and can convince people why I did it. Best part is, even when one of my experiments flop, they still say: good try.