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TEDx Talks
Published: 2016-10-07
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YalRmUMTuoE
good evening my name is Doug Hutchins and I am a professional advice giver so specifically I work with students generally spectacularly talented young students helping them think about their lives at the intersection of academia internationalism and service work and about once a month I get the same question a student comes to me and they say dog what do I need to do in order to win
the roads if you come see me because I'm at work with a lot of students through this process I've advised scores and scores of roads applicants I including two dozen students who have gone on to be national finalist and forced into actually ended up winning the Rhodes Scholarship so these conversations with the students they're always really fun the students are bright and engaging and excited they're
hard working they knew who they are they know what they want to be and they come to see me because I figured I must learn something after all this time right I'm at work with all of the students fi must have something that I am able to give them a a plan a time line a checklist of things you must do in order to win the
Rhodes Scholarship I think at least some of them that I've got some sort of secret password like I can tell them all right here detail in the middle of the interview you stand up turn around sit down knock on the table three times a whisper butterscotch and all your roads dreams will come true no the frequency of this conversation is is really not that surprising given
that we're talking about the Rhodes Scholarship which is one of the oldest and most prestigious scholarships in the world it fully funds two or three years of study at Oxford university and a wide variety of fields and also provides almost unparalleled opportunities for network I sometimes tell students that if you win the Rhodes Scholarship it can unlock doors for you that you don't even know exist
at this point it's an award that selects fewer than ninety students around the world every year and it served as kind of a global clearinghouse for talent students have won the roads have gone on to be heads of state and Nobel Prize winners an Olympic medalists it's an opportunity that can change your wife's of course do alright so what do I tell them what's the big
secret if it's not stand up and announce it down for not but I've got if that's not it what's the advice I give and you can write this down is really good is really important alright piece of advice number one there is no checklist and even if there were you wouldn't want it and be the right number two you're not gonna win the Rhodes Scholarship and
even if you could you might not want thank you all very much I hope you have a great tax it's been great talking with you clearly all of you can take that advice and all go win roads because I think you get a room in a room you get a vote everybody gets Rhodes scholar okay but says that this is the advice that I give students
so why is this what do I possibly mean by that alright piece of advice number one there is no checklist and even if there were you wouldn't want it be honest atlas they're boring right check with existing it higher reason you have a checklist is to help you make sure that you get the boring mundane drudgery of David day life dot here is a checklist that
just have exciting fun interesting things on it if you're doing something that's exciting and fun and interesting you don't need a checklist before colleges suppose Vaughn exciting interesting challenging it's time for you to test her aspirations to figure out who you are how you're going to be in the world and it takes some risks please I always thought of please don't what college become about checking
off boxes on some sort of mythical let's right but while there is not a checklist I do think that we can talk about a formula for success check lists there prescriptive and limiting in really boring weights but formulas formulas can be applied to a lot of different situations and a lot of different lives so every Rhodes scholar I've ever worked with and most of the finalists
to have two things in common first thing is that they know what it is that they're passionate about in life and the second thing is that they have pursued those passions two exceptional hands Kendra took her passion for medicine and as an undergraduate worked as a paramedic in Bolivia for some Arafat or had two passions one for design and one in human rights she combined them
and created campaigns for nonprofit organizations Hommel took his passion for his government and for political science and he in turn at the very highest levels of his country's government and for all became one of the leading young voices for Arab women in computing in order to be a Rhodes scholar you have to know what you're passionate about sue it exceptionally well okay piece of advice number
two you're not gonna minaret scholarship and even if you could you might not want to right the first part of that is just back right there's a whole lot more incredibly talented young people out there than there are road scholarships available and unfortunately in a competition like this the odds are never in your favor when you get to the very highest levels of the Rhodes Scholarship
everyone has named their passions and pursue them to exceptional levels and the committee's decisions in the other are very very fine distinctions tween incredibly well qualified candidates and oftentimes lock and subjectivity and applying outsized role that's just the math side so why do I tell students that even if you could win the road you might not want to the roads has a very specific definition of
six if a great definition of except it works wonderfully well from this but a hundred years defining this definition Rhodes scholars are not insult the roads is famous words mere book work instead they are and I'm not the first person to say this well rounded with a bump they're good at lots and lots of things and there's one area in which they are exceptionally talented great
depth it's not the definition of there are lots and lots of ways to define success outside of roads lots of ways that you can reach your goals without that after all does not pick a Rhodes scholar to figure out that there were more heads of state and more Nobel Prize winners and more Olympic medalists who were not Rhodes scholars then who were Rhodes scholars the really
important thing then is to define success your way not just to accept roads of you're going to be a different person when you walk across that stage at graduation so it behooves you to take some time to think about who run with the person to be what is success in my college career look like when I graduate from college who don't want to be what to
wear one of don what one of learned what questions do I want to have engaged what people do I one of Matt where do I want to have gone who I want to have served and how those are the questions that you really need to answer the worst outcome I think if if you were to simply accept Rhodes's definition and to never question it never interrogated
I think you just end up checking boxes off of the list in order to win a scholarship that you're not gonna win so if I have one request from all these amazingly talented students if that's to stop coming to me or to people like me and to stop asking the question how do I wind Val Rhodes scholars and instead ask yourself and I can help ask
yourself how do I win my Rhodes Scholarship using the roads here as a metaphor for success at the highest levels in the things that I care the most about maybe if you can do that all sorts of different ways maybe you really do want to go to graduate school but Oxford is not the right choice for you or maybe you don't go to graduate school at
all and you wanna go found your own company or maybe for you defining success is less about the topics you care about or the skills that you care about and it's about doing the work laying the groundwork so that you can lift your family out of poverty or hundreds and hundreds of other ways that you can define your Rhodes scholars let me be very very clear
he wants a nobody ever suggested that I should apply for a scholarship when I was in college nor should they have I was not the kind of student who wrote ever would have any interest but yet by defining success ma away by naming the things that I'm passion by pursuing them whole heartedly I feel like I've won my Rhodes Scholarship at least five times in my
life first I spent two years in the jungles of Suriname South America as a Peace Corps volunteer working with the people there the people who became my friends on their own developmental I don't know that my left kidney fifteen years ago to my friend Cheryl and changed her life and mine in the process they're all triathlons that I've completed and note not trapped once I have
one that is not a good definition of success in my life just competed in generally finished number for all the students that I've gotten to advise and work with and mentor over course of my career especially those tunes I got to know through an organization called the posse and last of all and most importantly is the family that I've helped those are my votes go I
look for some of you your road scholarship is V. Rhodes Scholarship and given the collection of talent in this room today I'd be pretty surprised if we didn't have a future roads finalist or even a Rhodes scholar sitting among us and for those students that's fantastic go for it do it work your hardest had come see me let me help you but for all of you
