Ice-breaker speech: Through adversities I found my passion (learning)
Preparation Notes:
Refer page no. 421 and 422 from Steve Jobs book
“Every adversity brings with it the seed of an equivalent advantage”
Introduction: I come from India and I am proud of the fact that our movie industry Bollywood is the second biggest movie industry after Hollywood. Almost all Indian movies contains 2 parts and after first part we get a 15mins interval to refuel ourselves. Likewise I would like to present my life story in two parts the first part is about my life in India and my second part is about how my life transformed drastically after I moved to Germany.
Points to cover in part 1:
- In India Family is everything. We make lot of trade offs just to keep our family happy which I personally did not find in Western world
- After a lot a research I found out that it is also only of the main reasons for being a corrupt country but I keep this topic for other speech
- My favourite parent is my dad
- My dad is my hero
- He is brave and he is a risk taker
- I always know that I have his back
- The trigger which made me to transform from being relaxed boy to studies kid
- My dad as a guest speaker for school annual day
- All good universities were in different city and to get into those good universities I had to get good grades in my pre university studies
- I used to party a lot have fun, had no big goals in life except to have fun and enjoy with friends
- Indian parents are very strict about drinking and they don't their children to get addicted to drinking
- Enjoy within your dignity and limits
Part 1: birth until age 21
Until the grade 6th I was a very average student and I used to get B's, I am like the tallest in the class and I think because of that I was kind of rebel in the class and I used to make lot of mischiefs, make my mates laugh but always afraid/ shy of girls which I still possess a bit.
In grade 7th two sections of our school got combined and I got new class mates. Among these new mates there was this guy who is as mischief as I am, almost of my height but other thing he had which I did not have was that he used to get way better grades than me. This new classmate of mine inspired me to get good grades by studying super hard and by the end of 12th grade I actually beat him in his grades and also I was one among the top 25 students of total 100 students of grade 12th. It was clear for me that I am going to take the path of engineering for my bachelor's studies and I have decided that during my engineering days I am not going to study hard and take things quite lightly. I left my hometown to started to pursue my bachelor's of engineering in Industrial Engineering and Management and like I made up my mind I did not study super hard but also never failed in any subjects and maintained a grade of 2.4.
While studying my bachelor's degree I told my dad that I want to pursue my masters degree as soon as I finish and bachelor's degree and told him to plan himself in terms of money and other related stuffs. I must say that am glad and thankful that I come from a quite well off family who has a family business and can afford to send their child abroad and my dad promised there and then that he would for sure support me to realise my dream. During my last semester I started applying to different Universities in Germany and I even got the acceptance from one of the universities and the time has come to pay my tuition fees to the university. Since we have a family business all the money will be invested in the business and there won't be so much liquid cash which he can give me to pay my tuition fees in order to get the confirmation of my admission. So the obvious option is to get student loan by pledging our property which we inherit from our grand parents. Due to the recent dispute between dad and my dad's brother family my uncle was not ready to sign the document which put my dad into helplessness situation and because of that he broke down and cried in front of me because he was not able to keep his promise. This was the moment which changed the whole life because my dad is my hero and in my 21 years time I have never seen him breaking down. At this very moment I was like dad it's all good I am all fine if I do not pursue my masters it's not the end and I am ok doing my masters degree here in India as well. But anyways a family for which my dad has helped few years back got to know this information and they came forward to offer their property which we can use to pledge and get the loan. That is the day I decided that after me coming to Germany I am not going to become burden to my parents and not gonna ask even a single penny here after.
Points to cover in part 2:
- Second big trigger which transformed me again to change from being a party boy to hard working man
- Started doing all the odd jobs to make my living
- I did not like the format of my masters studies and hence decided to figure out what I liked doing and started to take online course and learn myself
- First unpaid internship to put into practice what I have learned online for myself
- Learning something new everyday has become a habit
- Quit smoking
- Picked up the habit of reading books and doing meditation
- And I am committed to do so hereafter
Part 2: I flew to Germany and to keep my promise the started to take all the odd jobs from distributing the papers to cleaning dishes in restaurant, from cleaning bathrooms in hotels to working in warehouses, from flipping burgers to packing Caprisonne cases. All these by attending lectures and after that doing my first unpaid internship.
End quote: When education becomes your entertainment you elevate
Actual script of the speech:
Feedback that I received after the meeting:
From Friederike:
- Don't try to be a teacher instead share the story with people whenever you want to empower them
From Lucio:
- I made a strong note that "My dad is my hero" whenever you make such a strong statements try to keep up that energy with the audience and say something more about topic
- Whenever you are telling personal story and using some of the words from different speeches you really do not have to use that person too many times in the talk
From Pooja:
- Be careful while using the quotes from people because Jay Shetty was one of the guys who got caught for plagiarism