grad serv speech.

Truthfully I can’t begin my speech recalling the memories of the busy halls, gossip, dances, and the Super Bowl of them all Grad night. Not because it’s cliché but because in my college experience they do not exist. The only busy halls I know are the early morning and late afternoon traffic jams. The only gossip I’ve heard was from the morning radio talk shows about celebrities. The only dances I remember are the celebrations after solving a single physics problem in three hours. And grad night for me was sleeping in after my very last final. And I’m not saying I’m popular but in high school I’ve made 100 or so friends. In college I can only recall 2. One was my lab partner who was forced to be my friend after sixteen to twenty hours a week with each other. And the other, I met in my Tupac class and eventually found out he didn’t even go to UC Berkeley at all.

But I’m not here to scare the newly high school graduates of the realities of college. My college experience is not a complete disaster and actually is the best time of my life so far. High school was memorable because I made long term relationships. College was memorable because I made an eternal relationship. I had finally opened my heart to Jesus and opened my eyes to a new world. A world where by the grace of God I have hopes of enjoying eternity in Heaven. A world where I can be optimistic of the future because through the pains I know that our God reigns. And especially a world with a meaning to life. Whereas a world without Christ, I can be successful, rich, and full of wisdom graduating from the number one public school in the nation yet never obtain true joy.

I had never seen myself where I am today, both as a Christian and physics major at Berkeley. Growing up I dreaded church and even cried getting ready every Sunday. I used to have a grudge against God because He gave my mom liver cancer. And when I was younger I wanted to become a fisherman because I used to think my dad was a fisherman by career not leisure. I drew pictures of myself fishing and even had a silver fish necklace. I already had aspirations to fish and not go to college. But throughout my educational experience I found out I was smart, just wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box. In middle school I was smart enough to get in to the gifted and talented educations program, just not smart enough to stay in. I got kicked out after a year. In high school I maintained a 4.0 grade point average, but along with about twenty other people, whose list of accomplishments and extra curricular activities nearly tripled my own. Yet only a couple of us were accepted into Berkeley.

But the beauty of God is that He has been intricately paving the pathway of my life and knows exactly who I am and where I am going. Therefore He gives reasons to everything. There is a reason to why my dad was unemployed and never home. There is a reason to why my mom worked in two hospitals at the same time as a nurse. There is a reason to why my mom was still able to take care of my sisters and I single handedly. There is a reason why my mom was diagnosed with liver cancer. There is a reason to why my mom would wake me up at 12 o’ clock in the morning to make corrections to my math homework – in elementary. There is a reason why I got kicked out the GATE program in middle school. There is a reason why my father cheated on my mom. There is a reason why I momentarily gave up in school. There is a reason why my parents split, why my family moved to a smaller house, why my sisters both moved out, and why my grandma passed away all during the summer before my senior year. There is a reason why during that same summer, my mother attempted suicide and I was the one to find her. The perseverance through the pain, the promises to myself to prove the GATE program, fellow students, and my father wrong, and the justification of my mom as a great mother, are the reasons why I was able to stick out from an elite group of students. And that summer I broke down on my knees and turned to God. I found out that God was all I needed, when God was all I had.

The amazing part about everything is that my childhood dream came true. Like the disciples in the Sea of Galilee, Jesus too has called me to come, follow him, and become a fisher of men.