So a blast from the past. NThreeQ is celebrating it's 5th anniversary this year, and I remembered entering in to a contest when I graduated with my MBA of being the speaker at the ceremony. I was runner up and never got to share it – so I thought I would now, 5 years later.

I can only understand and explain what the value of education is by what I have learned and how I have changed. When thinking about this speech I was reminded of the book “All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten” by Robert Fulghum.

He says that wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there is a sand pile at Sunday school. We are now at the top of graduate school mountain, some of us are at the top, some at the middle and some want to be at the top of their very own sand pile. Education is made to help students find their fit and their place in the world. Before my MBA, I had a different plan for life but it still did not fit. Halfway through the program I found what I loved and what fit, I found my very own sand pile.

Here are other kindergarten life lessons that still work today.

• Share everything and play fair. In the program, you didn’t always want to play fair or share however, your team was part of your future and you had to learn to work together.
   
• Clean up your own mess and don’t take things that aren’t yours. Well, this has a lot of truth to it. Have you ever written a paper for your team late at night and the next morning even you cannot make sense of it? You will understand about cleaning up your own mess because no one else will do it for you. And of course, plagiarism – don’t take what is not yours!
   
• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. My last few classes ended up in a hotel in Scottsdale. Initially, it was a shock and upsetting to find out we had no campus just a hotel. However, we had cookies almost every night, and coffee not milk. That is one of my fondest memories that I will miss the most. Cookies with my class talking about school and about life.
   
• Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work everyday some.  Although school is over, this only opens up more doors and windows to go through.
   
• When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together. We are the future and we have the abilities to change the world, even if it is just changing ourselves.

I will never forget my experience with this program, and I will never forget the people I have had the opportunity to meet- students and instructors. As we go in to the world, with whichever degree we have received never forget how you got there and as my father has always told me…

To Never, Never, Never Quit.

To success,

Angelina Gonzales
NThreeQ Media