Alumni Perspective: King of Quotes
by Ronald AngSiy – SVMP ’11
Ronald AngSiy is currently a Strategy and Transformation consultant for IBM with over 10 client projects including: Walmart, J&J, and Pepsi. He is an honors graduate from Indiana University with several Mentorship awards from various academic affiliations on campus. He has also been a mentor for Brown University’s Venture Incubator and worked at a global advertising agency.
I find the contemporary rendition of carpe diem quite compelling: YOLO. In the spirit of this thought, I have collated 10 contemporary and classic quotes from my collection in context of professional advice, complimented by my own experiences for enrichment (yes I shamelessly abuse alliteration).
1) “It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.”
You only work at one company. It only takes one offer. Your rejections don’t cumulatively count (like bad test grades). I applied to over 160 internship positions my junior year, and only had 2 offers. The offer I took changed my life and also led me to SVMP.
2) “The rainbows of life follow the storms.”
People talk about work-life balance, but if you do it right, then there shouldn’t have to be a balance because you love what you do. It’s a common theme CEOs recently speak to (most recently Marissa Mayer). I think that living 5/7th of your life simply to enjoy the 2/7th is a terribly bad value proposition.
3) “Everyone has his burden. What counts is how you carry it.”
To go with point 2, many people do not adequately distinguish between “difficulty” and “misery.” You can dislike the mundane day-to-day tasks, the stress, the underappreciation, or so forth. However, there has to be something intrinsically motivating to push you forward, even if just conceptual. For example, it’s easy to classify Finance employees as simply money-driven. However, Finance for many is a field that allows you to purely express and tangibly prove “victory” in an open competition. It’s one of the few fields outside of sports that allow individuals to compete on a raw, unabated level.
4) “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
Life isn’t rooting “for” you or actively “against” you the way the school system is setup with grades and teachers. Life is…apathetic. It doesn’t care; it moves along with or without you. It’s up to you to make what you want of it, but many people don’t take firm enough control.
5) “A candle loses nothing if it’s meant to light another one.”
When you go to conferences, networking events, or speaker series, the attendees can oftentimes be as valuable as the speakers themselves. Everyone is equal, so just make friends. Worst case scenario is that you make a new friend. I value those relationships as much as I have from any speaker I met. Sometimes they’re the same person.
6) “We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.”
Keep perspective. I hear people complain about their salaries or perks, but in the broader market there are so many intelligent kids with just part time jobs that will professionally scar them for their careers.
7) “If everything seems like it’s under control, you’re just not going fast enough”
Have a plan, but be opportunistic. Life is long and you never know where you’ll end up. I wanted to be in advertising since jr. high, yet had a major life twist in my senior year of college.
8) “All the power is from within and is therefore under our own control.”
Find ways to constantly motivate yourself. I went to an MBA event recently and it motivated me to perform better at work when, ironically, an MBA program takes you out of work. Not sure why. Psychology is a strange creature.
9) “Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get..”
People often times don’t appreciate what’s going well for them already when there’s something not going well. I’m financially and professionally healthy now, but underestimated the happiness that my multi-year relationship in college comparatively brought me. I’m grateful for what I have for I know it can end at any moment…literally.
10) “If you wait till the last minute, it only takes a minute.”
Sorry that was trolling.
11) “There’s no such thing as a grown up. We move on, we move out, we move away from our families and form our own. But the basic insecurities, the basic fears and all those old wounds just grow up with us. …We get bigger, we get taller, we get older. But for the most part, we’re still a bunch of kids. Running around the playground trying desperately to fit in.”
This is true. I have nothing more to add.
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