How not to be average

[Applause]

you’re born

into an average middle class family in

hanoi

your parents work really hard to make

enough money to send you and your other

sibling to public schools

have some savings and hopefully can take

the family out on a vacation

once a year you attend an average class

in an average school you’re the average

student

so that’s why you work really hard to

get sorted into a probably good high

school and then hopefully a decent

college

from there life is easy you’ll graduate

with a good degree

get a good job in a big city find the

love of your life

get married raise your kids and then you

will work really hard to make enough

money to send your kids to public

schools

have some savings and hopefully can take

the family out on the vacation

twice a year repeat how many of you here

felt that

what i just described is expected to be

your life can you show

your hands all right

like many of you i this i had all the

conditions to live this life

to live this super average life i was

born in an

average middle class family in hanoi i

attended public schools my whole life

and i was i was an average student in a

good high school and

i was about to take the university

entrance exam

until one day at 16 i decided that you

know what

this is not the life that i want to live

one of my favorite teachers

used to say that there are two choices

when it comes to

how you want to live your life the first

choice

is that you can just follow the path

that is set in front of you and just

step along the grand rocks

all the way this is the popular path

and there are many people marching with

you on this part

uh people walking in front of you behind

you on the left and the right of you

you’re marching all together to this

society idea of success

the second choice is that

you it’s what they call the roadless

travel or

it’s a path where you do remarkable

things because you choose to

you choose not to stay with what the

society expected of you

and instead you opened your mind and

your heart to the endless possibilities

of the war around you i was following

the first path for the first 16 years of

my life

i was walking with the giants

and today i want to share with you about

how i need to work

from the normal road and march on my own

path

and what this experience has taught me

and my idea is that

you don’t have to follow a predetermined

route that is

set for you by the society and if you

follow

your own path if you’re brave enough to

follow your own path

you will find your own success so

and if we can apply this to education it

would be really amazing so let me tell

you

a personal story i love mathematics as a

kid

and i used to in secondary and in

primary school i would spend hours every

night working on advanced math problems

what i enjoy most about working on a

math problem

is not to find the answer it is to find

many different ways

to get to the answer and there are many

many ways

that you can do this in math right and

my teacher up to that point

really appreciated this and they praise

me for my creativity

when i approach a math problem until i

get to high school so

let me introduce you my high school math

teacher

right my high school math teacher was

probably one of the most ocd person you

can ever meet

he’s obsessed with getting everything

right according to his way

his favorite saying right you do not

know the way let me show you the way let

me show you my way

so math class became more like dictation

class

he would read he would write the problem

on the board he would solve that and

then we would copy his answer

and every exam we have to do it word by

word if you get a word wrong

you get a point on so gradually

my passion for math disappear

the possibilities that i find in a math

problem in approaching a math problem

disappear and or in bigger scope i lost

interest in

exploring the different possibilities of

life

at that moment i realized how how much

important or

how much i value the power of being

different of finding a different way

so at 16 i i had a dream

and i had a dream that one day i would

be able

to study abroad to explore whatever i’m

curious about

that i can travel a lot and have friends

from all around the world

because i know how hard it would be for

my family to afford a kid to study

abroad

we had one vocation once a year and it’s

domestic i’ve never been outside of

vietnam at that point

and i know how hard it would be for me

to be able to study abroad but at that

point

i’m determined i’m determined that i

will make the second choice

to go the other path to follow what i

thought was best for me

so in the summer when i was 16 trying

grinding

two to three hours every night searching

for any scholarship opportunity

that would ease the financial burden for

my family

and luckily i found out about united

world college

this is what they say on their website

united world college they say that in

two years

you will be studying in one of the 18

campuses around the world

where you will have friends from around

the world you get to travel a lot

around the world and you can you’re free

to explore whatever

you’re curious about does that sound

familiar

that was my dream right so i jump and

okay i’m gonna apply it let it apply how

hard can it be

right so there are three applications

round the first one you fill in the form

an application form got that then you

get an interview with an alumni

i got that and then enter the final 30

students round

and you know when you walk into a group

or an event like this you kind of know

who is who

so data scientists have taught us that

every population

can be broken down into a bell curve and

for those of you who do not know what

the bell curve

is this is what it looks like you always

have low performers you have high

performers

and then you have the average so

consistently throughout my life

i’ve been always been the average right

average student average school

everything was average about me

sometimes i move

forward a little bit sometimes i move

backwards but very consistently

i’ve been this person up there and

when i entered that final round when i

joined the facebook group for the final

30 finalists for the united world

college scholarship

i immediately knew i was here okay

you can laugh because it’s funny now but

it was not funny at the town

people were from uh their province’s

national olympians team

they were presidents of some big name

projects they know how to play musical

instruments

traditional musical instruments they

know how to speak two to three languages

some of them even got longer hair than

me how am i supposed to compete with

that

right so i decided to re-evaluate myself

on the curve

and this is what i came up with are you

ready boom i was a potato

i felt that i panicked right i started

questioning myself

why me a kid who competes in no national

competition

play leads no club or plays no musical

instruments

get into this round of five of the the

final 30

best people for this scholarship and the

more i look at myself in comparison

to those around me with the other

applicants the more

average or below average i felt and i

knew deeply at that point is that being

average was never enough

in order to get this scholarship you

have to be the best of the best and i’m

being the worst of the worst

so one night i told my mom that

okay mom listen i don’t want to go to ho

chi minh to embarrass myself

in front of all these amazing

individuals um

i i don’t know what to do please tell me

and my mom told me a few words

that changed my life forever and i would

like to share this with you

she said that you need to stop focusing

on the things that you do not have and

start

focusing on the things that you do and

you have something unique

that absolutely no one else in this

world has

let’s think about it for a moment it was

the night before i took my flight

to ho chi minh for the final interview

round and

it was the night that i realized that

you know i don’t have to be

above average i don’t i can feel

comfortable being average or even below

average in some aspects

because everyone has their own strengths

and weaknesses

and up until today i think that i got

the uwc scholarship

not because of the things that i did not

have but because of the unique things

that the selection comedy only see in me

if you focus on the strength

instead of your weaknesses you go very

far and let me tell you a funny side

story

i watched my first ted talk when i was

14 and i couldn’t remember

what it was about but the 17 minute talk

was so

interesting that i was hooked into it

that i had a dream that one day i could

be standing on the tenth stage

making extremely long pauses

and blowing people’s mind right that was

my dream so when ted be uv came to me

with an offer

i it was like this again it was a dream

come true moment right

so until i was so excited to talk and

then i had all this

planned drafting in my head until i saw

the speaker line

up with all these incredible big names

in education

mr hill mr thumb mark

kevin everyone and then i thought of

myself as

the potato at the end of the curve again

that’s how i re-evaluated myself in the

town so what i learned is that

you will always find reasons you will

always find reasons to disqualify

yourself

for something you always find reasons to

disqualify yourself from something right

and you always think that you’re not

smart enough you’re not inspiring enough

you’re not old enough you’re not

experienced enough

it turns out that our education system

has trained us

to look at one person and judge whether

whether that person stand in a group

using one single bell curve

it turns out that the bell curve was

right and wrong

when you look at the person holistically

there are infinite bell curves

i’m sorry i’m sorry we never put a

metric on the bell

curve is it measuring mathematics

reading skill

athleticism coding public speaking

prestigious college

it turns out that if you if you look at

a person holistically there are infinite

bankers

when it comes to how you judge that

person and where that person is standing

in a group there’ll be belkers

that you’re low performers there will be

bankers that you’re average

there’ll be bankruptcy above average but

the sum of all this

comes with one idea is that each and

every one of us today have something

unique

that absolutely no one else in this

world has because

of the combination of different belkers

that we have

and that is my belief fast forward five

years later

i’ve been able to travel around the

world i’ve been able to have a lot of

friends

from all around the world uh i’ve been

free to explore anything that i’m

curious about

due to the education that i receive but

most importantly and this is the best

part

is that i’ve been able to inspire many

others

to follow this dream to walk on their

own path

and pursue their passion and i think

that

if you are brave enough to embrace your

uniqueness

and walk on your own path you will end

up with a reality that is way bigger

than your dream

and you can trust that from me so what

would this look like if we apply this

principle

to our education system what would this

look like

i’ve seen what this looks like and it’s

absolutely amazing

i would like to start with a statement

that i believe that creativity

plays a crucial role in this in this

journey of helping people finding their

own path creativity

and i define creativity here as finding

new ways to solve old problems finding

new ways of solving

problems the problems we’re facing at

hand right now is how to live

a happy and meaningful life and what i’m

proposing it

is we need to use creativity in this for

the past five years

i’ve been working with an organization

called the creative kid program

or ckp for short which aims to boost

creativity

in vietnamese students and there are

three principles that we use

that i would like to share with you

today that i believe that we can boost

students creativity and help them more

courageous

in the path that they’re taking the

first principle

is is there another way is there another

way

when you imagine a traditional classroom

you can think of

tables chairs chalkboards teachers

standing at the center of the class

lecturing to the students very much like

this

right and so when ckp was founded we

asked the question is there another way

that students can learn and what we come

up with

is yes there is another way so we get

rid of all those notes table no tier

no chalkboard and the student become the

center of the classroom

discussing ideas with their peers under

the facilitation

or under the supervisation of what we

call a facilitator

we take classrooms to dorm rooms we take

students on field trips

we put them in different groups or we do

anything that makes the students

feel curious about learning we do it

with a different way

so in order to show the students that

there are many creative ways

to learn we start with the learning

environment and within that learning

environment

here comes the second principle the

second principle is that there’s no

crazy ideas

when a student comes to us with an idea

or a social project that they want to do

we don’t say okay that’s stupid don’t do

that go do this

right because first of all that’s rude

that’s really rude

and second of all we know that students

or

especially children get really defensive

easily

if you tell them that their ideas are

stupid

so even if they are um so

we decided we decided that okay

here’s what we’re gonna do ask don’t

judge we’re gonna ask questions

uh we’re gonna start by where where’s

the inspiration come from where did you

get the inspiration

uh what’s the effort we need to get

there are you willing to make such

effort

and how can i help you by asking

questions

you are helping your students evaluate

their own ideas

using their own thinking and i think

that’s very important

in order to walk on your own path it

needs a lot of careful consideration

it doesn’t mean that one day you can

just walk outside and then walk on your

own path you might die

especially in hanoi

so in order to get this careful

consideration

educators and parents here’s your time

to shine you can play a crucial role

by helping students realize and

re-evaluate their own pros and cons the

risks and the benefits

by asking them good questions and then

here comes

the last and once they’ve had the

courage

to walk on their own path after

re-evaluating everything

and they have made the decision to okay

i’m brave enough to walk on my own path

now

and take full responsibility for this

fail to learn

you fail to learn recently i consulted a

social project

uh founded by my campers 11 11 to 12

years old

very young age and after we did the last

reflection three months ago and the

conclusion was very simple

the project failed but the real

conclusion

that we came up with that day is that

the project failed

but we learned a lot by allowing

your students to we learned a lot we

learned a lot about how to manage

a project we learned a lot about time

management we learned about

a lot about how to talk to people how to

get money

from people and how to trade people into

going to our events

we learn a lot of things right

especially this kind of event

right we learn a lot and here’s the best

part

is that this happens because that i

always reassure them that hey if you

fail i will be there with you

i’m not gonna ditch you i’m not gonna

shame you i will be there with you and

we’re gonna pick

us right back up and walk think about

this as failure with a net

right it’s like a circus act you don’t

push your students on the time to roam

50 meters above the ground

and expect them to walk without a safety

net right

you create a safety net so that when

they fail

the tumble feeling and the unpleasant is

real right but it does not it does no

lasting damage

so that if they fail they can bounce

back up and learn again

and i think that’s incredibly incredibly

important

in walking on your own path is that

because no personal path

is guaranteed success they will fail a

lot but then they will learn a lot so

educators and parents here’s your time

to walk with your students to make sure

that they feel safe

when they start walking on their own

path by using these three principles

i i promise that your students will be

able

to go very far i promise our education

system

has always been obsessed with this idea

of paving one single perfect path

for everyone you go to a good school

you get a good job you get a lot of

money you raise your kid

you retire and you disappear

i don’t believe that is the goal of

education i believe the goal of

education

is to empower every single student to be

create

to be courageous enough to walk on their

own path

to follow their own dreams what i’m

sharing today is not to encourage

every one of you to go study abroad and

do education

that is my path and that might not be

yours

what i’m sharing today is my belief that

each and every one of us

is capable of making the second choice

to open your mind and your heart to the

endless possibilities of life

and then to courageously walk on your

own path

it will take you to incredibly amazing

places

we gather attend today to celebrate the

many possible ways

that we can better our lives so i would

like to end with this note

i would like all of us to have the

courage to imagine

to dream and to pursue the endless

possibilities of life

because i know that there’s something

unique about you

that absolutely no one else in this

world has thank you