…you don’t have to.

So, I’m taking this marketing class right now. There was a huge project due in it today. It’s worth 50% of our mark with the presentation component. We got an early start on it of course, but somehow when it came time to hand it in, it wasn’t finished.

This led to the staple of an experience for a university student: the all nighter.

I personally don’t like to do these events, because I really like sleep. I mean, I love sleep. And when I’m tired and bored, the first thing I do is take a nap. Seriously, I like naps. But, with so many marks and the fate of 5 of my group members lying in my hands, I began shortly after my house team volleyball game on redoing our references. And redoing them. And more. More. Still. 4 hours later and approaching 2am, there was an end in sight: to references, all 5 pages of them, seriously, size 8 font, 5 pages o__O;;

By this moment, when you’ve already missed on a lot of sleep the night before, things start to get funny. At least they do for me. I mean, I start to find the most stupid thing hilarious. It’s kind of bad.

After finishing, I took a trip to meet with Sahir, who’s in my group and I’ve known since 1st year. He was also working on his 220 project, which is worth like 60% of the course mark. Good times. We sat in DC with another one of his friends, and I swear to god the most inane things got funnier and funnier by the moment. We discussed group members, typos, chocolate bars, snickers vs mars, projects, formatting; all while “killing shit” as the formatting or something would go horribly wrong while fixing stuff in Word.

Oh yeah, at this point I’ve also felt like I achieved some effing zen moment with Microsoft Word. I was on a roll. I figured out how to do proper references, auto-generate a table of contents (I mean, this was like epic), and ok, get this: 3 years into my university career I’ve figured out how to start the page numbers not on page 1. I kid you not. For 3 years I wrote my title pages and table of contents and executive summaries separate just to avoid this problem. I think Word and me are kinda tight now, werd!

Tim Horton’s hot chocolate at 4am is shitty. I don’t know why, but it is. Would not buy again

By 7am, I finally got to printing the work. It was beautiful. I think I shed a tear. I just shed a tear again as my browser reminded me that I was about to misspell beautiful, that’s just not acceptable.

So there you go. It was a long night. It was a hard night. But the project got done. I believe my group owes me food or sleep. Since I don’t want any of them sleeping with me or using chloroform in any way, I will take food. Mmmmm….

Today we meet here, in this classroom to appreciate, take in and be moved by the speeches of our peers.
I find myself in the envious, captivating, terrifying and moving position of convincing you to take action on a goal.

As I sat and thought about what great ideal I would like to impart upon you in my speech I considered those of you who went before me. The vibrant assortment of tasks you’ve all presented to the class.

I thought about our world. I thought about the achievements we’ve created and the atrocities we’ve committed. The actions that we took, the opportunities that we passed on.

I imagined, dreamed and pictured a world where each and one of us is empowered to take action and make change. Where the smallest of initiatives grows and grows to become something so much bigger.

This world of action is a beautiful place.

And so I come to you today, to impart on you the call to act. The heroic and sometimes difficult step that simply asks of you to do something, instead of sitting back and taking no step forward. I want to talk to you about the actions that change our lives, daily. The actions that we can take to make a better world. And above all, I want to show you, that the only way we can impart change, is by starting at an individual, by starting at you.

Very recently I’ve had the privilege of listening to a distinguished speaker. I bring this up because she gave us a simple list. A mere 5 things to do that she believed were the keys to success. There was just one that I would like to relay to you today. The action, so simple, yet I can almost certainly say all of us here are guilty of it all the time. When we pass that friend, that accomplice anyone we know, why do we not always say the simplest of hello’s? That action alone would surely brighten anyone’s day. But, do you think you can make an even bigger difference? You know when we say “how are” and keep walking and the person does their best to say “oh good” and squeeze in their own obligatory “how are you”.

Stop – and have this conversation.

This action is the most basic act of care that you can show towards another person in a day. And think of all the times when you weren’t just “good”, wouldn’t it have been so nice to say “well, no, I’m not good” and have the other person listen?!

That is surely a step to a much better world. But, let me break this euphoria of happiness. Let me extend the simple hello and how are you. Suicide, a very sobering topic. According to World Health Organization it is a cause of death that leads murders and wars combined and is on a rise. From a recent seminar that I’ve attended as part of my Don training, the number one prevention method was so simple. It was to take notice of the person, to do something instead of nothing, to approach them and ask. That’s it, just do something. Anything. And that simple “hello, how are you” may very well suddenly save a life.

A great US president and a great man, John F. Kennedy once uttered the now infamous words “We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard”. The ultimate call for action. And yes, the call for challenging actions will have to be met too. But you’re just one person, you’re yourself – and doesn’t that make these epic efforts hard? Doesn’t it feel difficult to take action on even the speeches you’ve found your peers presenting in here? I’d like to show you that that difficulty is not an excuse to do nothing. That challenge, you, don’t have to take on all by yourself. But you can do something, and taken as a whole, that something becomes so much more.

Do you think you can help to prevent global warming, to significantly reduce energy cost and to maybe even save our planet, one day. Seems like a daunting task, but I’m here to remind you that all you have to do is just the minute something. Change a light bulb. That’s it. From a study, if just every household in the US did just that. The emissions of 800,000 cars could be offset, and 3 million more homes could have light for a year. Just one simple action, imagine.

Edward Everett Hale, a man who helped with the dissolution of slavery and the implementation of popular education said: “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something I can do.”

This simple quote epitomizes my message to you. I want you to know, that you’re never too small to do something. And that doing something is always better than doing nothing. No action is too little to not spark a following, a movement and an ideal.

I want you to think back in our history, think of all the prominent events and figures. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Albert Einstein, John F. Kennedy, Rosa Parks, Winston Churchill and Oscar Schindler. They were all just individuals who did something and something else and then something else again, and as an entire world we know their actions and feel their effects today.

Martin Luther King once had a dream. Today, I have a dream too.

A dream of a world where we as individuals empower ourselves to take action. Where we consider no individual interaction too petty, too little, to not dive into it fully and with the utmost of attention and intent.

Where no one backs down from a challenge, that we all face together, and does nothing, when they could bite off an easy chunk and do something. Set an example that others will follow and together, the challenge will be solved.

I dream of a world where these little movements lead to a better place. And I’m telling you that for all the beautiful words and examples that we have in our history so many of them say we can. The individuals, turned leaders before us, all universally say one thing. Take action, take interest, do what you can, and out of that will come the best of things.

Thank you

It’s like 1:30am. I’m trying to finish laundry. I am sooooo tired from the last few nights of fire alarms, prank phone calls, prank door buzzers and people playing football in a snowstorm outside of my windows. Tomorrow is a big day. I have a Public Speaking class persuasive speech to deliver. I am actually really looking forward to it, but it took me a long time to pick what topic I wanted to do and I don’t feel as ready as I’d hoped I would be at this point.

I think I’m going to take tomorrow morning off from another class and polish this speech, it’s 35% of my mark in that course and I actually feel like I want it to be meaningful beyond just that mark. Maybe I’ll try and post it at some point, who knows, I like to improvise so much during speeches that it may not even be what I end up delivering XD

It was Alice’s birthday recently, for those of you that read and know her, hint, hint.

Oh, we played another volleyball game with our floor team today. We were off to a rough start as we’ve not played since before reading week. Amazingly we’ve had the most people out since the first game and actually had two people to rotate, which made things easier. The game was in a different gym though and there were games all around and we kept having to restart because a stray ball would end up in my or my teammates feet, annoying. The coolest thing though is that Yuichi, who was my Japanese TA, was playing on our opponents team. I gotta say he’s really, really good and a lot of times when I thought we totally had a point, he’d run out from the other side of the court and somehow get it in this amazing one hand dive. It definitely made me be like “Ok, Sergey, you gotta step it up. Don’t suck!” — which was a lot of fun. We had this amazingly long rally where I think the ball went over at least 10 times and we finally, finally got the point after a lot of effort.

As is true of our team, we lost the first set. I think we spent more of it remembering how to play and talking to each other, haha, we’re so pro! The second set we were definitely down, but then we came together and squeaked in a 26-24 victory, tight. There was a lot of cheering, high fiving, double high fiving and general celebration In the 3rd and deciding set we started off really well by losing our serve and going down 8 to 10, then 8 to 12 then 9 to 14. Oh this was going to be rough. But in true team “as long as it’s over” style we managed to put off screwing up a serve or losing a point and brought it all together with a one point win!

Oh well, I should run and take a shower now. I’m pretty sure I smell. And then of course I’ll feel wide awake when I actually need to be sleep. Sigh to that. Cya!