Still bleary-eyed from reading many dozens of commencement speeches and sore-armed from sifting them with a flat-shovel for the special commencement-speech August issue of Vital Speeches of the Day, allow me to indulge in a little merriment.
In a speech to graduates of the University of Arizona in Tucson, Nobel Prize scientist Brian Schmidt said:
The other way that people get derailed is through bad things that happen to them. Let's be clear. Bad things happen to everyone.
Over your career you will be maligned by colleagues, treated unfairly by your supervisors and passed over for promotion by your employer. You will be ignored, unjustly blamed and you will have bad luck.
It is in your interest to move on and forward with your life when this happens. Of course, anything illegal should be reported to the relevant body—but let the relevant body deal with it. Pursuing justice yourself will only distract you from what you really want to be doing …
Couldn't you just thank God for inspiration like that?
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