Excellence is a Shared Path: Student Remarks

In their brief remarks honoring the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., two students strike the theme of collaboration. They touch on the importance of humility and listening to one’s inner voice while pursuing a shared vision of justice and equality. When she first came to MIT, Khalea Robinson was set to become a builder of bridges and skyscrapers. “Their visibility and permanence appealed to me.” But a talk she attended on some of the world’s pressing problems shook her commitment to this path. Access to clean water, and other issues, should surely count more than her own private engineering goals, she imagined. But after taking introductory courses in environmental and civil engineering, she realized that she “couldn’t simply fall in line wherever there was a call, because there are so many calls, all of them worthy.” Robinson felt that she should instead look for a field that would “bring forth my initiative, passion, drive, insight and courage,” while also promoting justice and fairness. In a world “full of complex problems that need to be solved by many people,” Robinson believes each of us “has a distinct voice that can and must be raised.” Pierre Fuller finds a model in Biblical scripture’s Nehemiah, who called on his people to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem one brick at a time, “each man contributing according to his ability.” Fuller recounts that when acquaintances call him a “genius” because he studies at MIT, he points to the help he received during his childhood in Flint, Michigan: his grandmother, a hospital cleaner; a barber friend with a drug record; and his mother — “who guided me with equal doses of love and tender encouragement, and a wooden paddle and a backhand that would rival Serena Williams.” Just as Fuller attributes his success to a collective that made unique contributions to his upbringing, he sees the project of building a better world as a function of individuals working together in humility, suppressing personal ambitions...

Channel: MIT World Video Length: 0s Date Found: Tue, Mar 08 2011 4:27 AM Category: Science Date Produced: Wed, Mar 02 2011 12:00 AM View Count: 6