Marlo Thomas said, “My father said there were two kinds of people in the world: givers and takers. The takers may eat better but the givers sleep better”. However, in today’s competitive world where everyone is in the race of becoming successful, the act of kindness seems to be fading. Each of us is working hard to pull each other down rather than just doing hard work, people are more into pulling the other down. The modern mantra of success feels like to be, “if you cannot win, don’t let others win”. An act of kindness, a practice of giving can be very rarely observed.
One such person is, Rebecca Leeper who is pursuing graduation in computer engineering at the Northeastern University. According to her, the revelation of who she could have emerged came at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, during a month-long Dialogue of Civilisations program that was led by her mentor, Political Science and International affairs professor Denise Garcia.
“Through the experience in Geneva, I was opened up to how much suffering is happening around the world, and that I am so privileged,” Leeper says. “No matter what obstacles I’ve faced in my own life, there are so many people out there that have overcome so much more, or are actually in the thick of it.” Further, after graduation she aspires to pursue an agenda of technology that helps people. “I think that’s something that Northeastern University has given me,” Leeper says. “I want to make sure whatever I’m doing is benefiting people. Because otherwise there is no point.”
Garcia, her mentor encouraged her to deliver a speech with an inspiring message to the other students who are at the stage of life where there seems to no path in front of them. His inspiring message is as follows,
“The biggest thing that I needed to do was to show them that it wasn’t perfect,” she says of her video presentation to the selection committee. “Whenever you speak, things happen—you lose your breath, or you have to swallow—and I wanted to show them that I’m very capable of moving forward from those moments. Because, standing in front of all those people, who knows what’s going to happen? I wanted to show that I could just keep going and I wouldn’t be fazed.”
I strongly feel a mentor plays a great role in changing the perspective of a student and helping his student to find their motive in life.
Priyanka Rawat