Editor’s note:
The graduation season is another year, and colleges and universities have successively ushered in the “climax” of the graduation season-the graduation ceremony. At the graduation ceremony, the “last lesson” teachers gave to graduates attracted much attention. Facing the students leaving the teacher, the teacher can’t avoid giving a few words. Many of these speeches were not only close to life, but also thought-provoking.
In this issue, we publish a graduation speech by Professor Qiu Huanguang, Dean and Professor of the School of Agriculture and Rural Development of Renmin University of China. In his speech, Professor Qiu Huanguang reminded everyone: give your ideals some time; persevere, life is like a marathon; take yourself seriously and do what you should do well; maintain a humble, kind, and cooperative heart, “You must learn to cooperate with others, and cooperation can create more opportunities to fall from the sky. As Nongfa people, we all know how to plant seeds in March, and we don’t need to be anxious if we don’t get a response temporarily. The seeds are germinating, and we often water and fertilize. , The rest will be handed over to the time, waiting for June to blossom and September to harvest.”
The School of Business will continue to select and publish wonderful speeches from professors and alumni representatives of various universities. Readers are also welcome to leave a message after the article to recommend an unforgettable graduation speech. 
Chou Huanguang, Dean and Professor of the School of Agriculture and Rural Development of Renmin University of China, delivered a graduation speech
Dear students:
I am very honored to have the opportunity to represent the college and say a few words to everyone at the graduation ceremony. Seeing the vibrant smiling faces of all of you, and seeing all of you full of confidence to a new stage in your life, reminds me of the words “The ocean is wide and the fish leap, the sky is high and the birds fly”. Looking back on the scene of my graduation from university more than 20 years ago, I feel that time is passing by in a flash, and I hope that the students will cherish the beautiful time of youth.
I don’t like long talks, and I don’t know much about reasoning. Because I always feel that actions speak louder than words, as a teacher, you should use your actions to tell students how to behave and do things. “Peaches and plums are not spoken, and the next step is to make a mistake.” Every student should feel the truth of being a serious person and doing things from the teachers of Renmin University and the teachers of Agricultural Development College, andThis feeling is internalized in the heart and becomes a habit of oneself. However, as I leave today, I still have a lot of reluctance. I still want to share a few of my thoughts and talk about the people and things I have experienced. I hope I can inspire you a little bit.
First, give the ideal time.
This is the name of a book I borrowed. In fact, what I want to say is that when you are busy studying, working and living every day, find For a moment, look up at the stars and let your ideals illuminate the path of your life.
When we were young, parents and teachers would often teach us to “be an ideal, valuable, and contribution to society.” But how does one count as a valuable and contributing person?
When I was a PhD student, I visited a foreign country once. Our professor is very strict with students. He checks in our office every morning, noon and evening before leaving get off work. Every time he “come to the black board” (come to the blackboard), he derives a formula.
Once, a classmate of mine became nervous and called the professor the producer. The old professor was very happy when he heard it, “yes, yes, I am a producer, you are a consumer” (yes, I am a producer, and you are still a consumer).
I think if expressed in the language of economics, a valuable person is when you look back on the past, you can say that I am a net producer to this society (Net contributor), not a net consumer. However, each of us consumes a lot of goods and makes various contributions to society. Some can be measured by currency, and some cannot be measured by currency. How to add up and what is the weight? There is no uniform standard. Maybe you became rich overnight and became a billionaire, maybe you silently contributed to poor farmers and children in a remote mountainous area, and you are as poor as you are. Who is the net consumer of this society? Who is the net contributor of this society? Only you The conscience in the heart can tell you the answer.
What is an ideal? Some people may say that I don’t know what my ideal is. My suggestion is, if you don’t know what your goals are in 5 years or 10 years, then you can think about it, you 60What kind of person do you want to be when you are old? I think it is easier to think clearly. If you have a clear idea of what kind of person you want to be when you are 60, you can reverse it. In order to achieve your 60-year-old goal, what kind of person you should be at the age of 50, and what kind of person you should be at the age of 40 or 30. Although the path of life is not completely controlled by yourself, there are many accidental factors, but if you know where the general direction is, you will not lose yourself. Even if you go with the flow occasionally, you will still be back on the right track you think.
Second, persistence, life is like a marathon.
As a graduating student of Renmin University, everyone is the best of the same age. You have already occupied a favorable position at the beginning of your life. However, this gap is definitely not enough to become a key factor in the gap in life. If you want to get more results than others, you need one point or even a lot of hard work than others, and this kind of hard work does not depend on one day, but on the accumulation of persistence. The start of the marathon is very crowded, but the end is often not crowded, because not many people can persist.
Some people say that to persist in doing one thing well, you must first be interested. I am a little skeptical about this sentence. Few people know what they are interested in from the beginning, and have the opportunity to choose the work they are interested in. On the contrary, I think that interest is gradually cultivated. Even a little bit of achievement or success brings you joy in your work, it may be a bit of touch in your work that makes you gradually fall in love with this job. In the process of cultivating this interest, most of the time may be very hard or even painful. I think young people will have such a stage no matter when they are in school or when they are just starting to work.
Here I want to use my PhD supervisor as an example. My teacher, Professor Huang Jikun, is a well-known agricultural economist in China and has a very high academic reputation in the world. It has been almost 30 years since he graduated with a doctorate degree. Basically, he works every day from 8 am to 12 pm, every day, no weekends, no holidays.
I remember the first week when I returned to China from the Netherlands in 2006 as a postdoc, I didn’t go to the office to work overtime on Saturday and Sunday, and I didn’t go the second weekend. Maybe I’m used to it abroad, and I think I should rest on weekends. As a result, after going to work on Monday, I opened the email and received 17 emails from Teacher Huang. My first instinct was that there was a virus in Teacher Huang’s mailbox! Then I opened them and looked at them one by one, and found that he worked on weekendsThe results were sent to my mailbox, and the last email said, “I didn’t see you in the office on Saturdays and Sundays. I have been working for 16 years. I have never had a weekend off. You just started working on weekends. It’s about to start to rest. Therefore, I basically work in the office every weekend and work overtime at night. When something has become a habit, you will find that it does not seem so painful. Hard work is a habit, and laziness is also a habit.
Third, take yourself seriously and do what you should do well.
What does it mean, don’t fool yourself. As students who graduated from Renmin University, they are national role models and social pillars. We have no reason not to take ourselves seriously. In the four years of our university or the three years of postgraduate, the teacher will ask you to do some research, and may also lead you to do some topics. What we should do is to do a good job seriously, not to deal with it casually, not to make fraud. For example, in regression analysis, you find that the results you want are not significant and do not support your original assumptions. What should you do? Some people may change the data directly, or even add two or three stars directly to the regression results, to make the results more significant, and get involved. I think if there is such a beginning, one’s future research and future work will not go too far. Therefore, I often tell my doctoral students and graduate students that if the work is not done well, there can be many reasons to explain it, but fooling and cheating are a matter of nature and character.
Fourth, maintain a humble, kind, and cooperative heart.
In the future, many of our classmates will become department leaders, corporate bosses, famous experts and scholars, standing at the top of the social pyramid. I hope that the students will still maintain a humble heart and respect everyone you meet from the personality, even if he is the weakest at the bottom of the society. Maintaining a kind heart, a difficulty, may be like a mountain that is difficult to climb for the weak, but may be just a small effort for you. Please stretch out your hand and make yourself a contributor to this society.
Keep a cooperative heart. In daily study, work, and life, you will always have some conflicts of interest with those around you. For example, in the selection of outstanding team members, outstanding class leaders, who is the first author and who is the second author when co-publishing articles, and so on. In the future, when you go to society and to work, you may face more of this kind of things. Take a long-term view and learn to grow in a win-win cooperation.
I give an example of my cooperation with a foreign teacher. I know this teacher at an academic seminar abroad. He was already a very famous Chinese scholar at the time, and was later elected to the UK Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences. I thought at that time, such a great expert, I must find the opportunity to cooperate with him.
One day, I chatted with him and knew he was Gansu people like to eat noodles. Everyone knows that Lanzhou Ramen is very famous. He said he is not used to western food, and I said I can cook, so you can come to my house (actually in the dormitory) to eat. In the end, he really invited me. I don’t know how to cook at all. I boil the noodles in a pot, beat two eggs, add some vegetable leaves, and make some chili sauce. Then I will make noodles. I will ask him to drink a bottle of beer, the famous Dutch Heineken, 1 Euro, and then began to talk about academic cooperation, and began to discuss project design and project application.
Then one day, he suddenly told the United Kingdom that the Newton International Scholars had recently been established. The scholarship is mainly to support young scholars from other countries to carry out collaborative research with researchers in the UK. We revised the previous application form and submitted it. In the end, a total of 50 people from all disciplines around the world received the funding, and I am one of them. 1.
Once, several academicians of the British Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society invited our sponsors to dinner, and I asked them, how did you choose these For the funded projects, they said: Did you see the stairs in the lobby? There were too many applications at the time. We threw these applications down the stairs and picked up 50 copies from the top. So I want to talk to you all Classmates said that we must learn to cooperate with others, and cooperation may create more opportunities for falling from the sky.
As Nongfa people, we all know how to plant seeds in March. Don’t be anxious if you don’t get a response for the time being. The seeds are germinating. We often water and fertilize, and we leave the rest to the time, waiting for the flowers to bloom in June and harvest in September.
Finally, I would like to give you a sentence from General Secretary Xi Jinping, and encourage everyone: “In the youth, when you choose to endure hardship, you choose to gain, and when you choose dedication, you also choose to be noble. “Only the youth who has worked passionately, only the youth who has worked hard, and only the youth who has made dedication to the people, will leave full, warm, lasting, and regret-free youth memories.”Bless everyone again! I believe we will see you again, I believe I will always miss, I believe we will all be fine, I believe everything I believe in becomes a flame, shining on each other’s faces, vast Sea of peopleSee each other.
(The original title of this article is “Dean’s Graduation Speech丨Qiu Huanguang: Be a Contributor to Society”, first published on the WeChat public account “SARDER” of the School of Agriculture and Rural Development of Renmin University of China. Dean and professor of Rural Development College, news is authorized to reprint.)