Self Discovery

If you can get curious about what scares or infuriates you, especially if it's part of yourself, you can get way less scared.

I think on some level, role models are overrated. Had I required that another black man from the Bronx had become an astrophysicist for me to become one, I'd still be in the Bronx.

Dare to say out loud the thing that you actually want and the hard part is actually over. Because then you'll start to make a plan, and when you have a plan, then you'll start to make that plan real.

Never let others define you. Define yourselves.

I implore you to never back away from fear, but instead, dive into it. I'm talking about the kind of inhibiting fear that erupts out of the idea of failure, or the possibility of making mistakes, and that nagging belief that you're actually a fraud and not good enough.

Please do not twist yourselves into shapes to please. Don't do it. If someone likes that version of you, that version of you that is false and holds back, then they actually just like that twisted shape, and not you.

You don't get redrawn in this life. You summon the hero, each day. On your best day.

In bringing the president to me, in having me speak to and question a shaper of history and experience the value he saw in my view, Harvard would make me feel I too could be him. I too had the power to shape history and not just be passively shaped by it.

Perhaps this self you've been treasuring for so long is itself the work of many hands.

What's next for me? I don't know. So I'm in exactly the same boat as many of you. And like you, I'm a little scared but also excited.

The search for purpose is really a search for a place, not an idea. It is a search for a location in the world where you want to be part of making things better for others in your own small way.

If you find yourself in a place where you stop caring — where your greatest concern becomes only you — get out of there.