2018 Graduation Ceremony/Completion Ceremony Speech

This is the speech at the 2018 graduation and completion ceremony.

March 26, 31
Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology Hiroyuki Ohno

Congratulations to all of you graduating from Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology today, and to those of you who are completing your graduate studies. On behalf of the faculty and staff of the university, I would like to extend my heartfelt congratulations.
This year, the following students will receive a bachelor's degree: Faculty of Agriculture 320, Faculty of Engineering 582, Master's degree holders Graduate School of Engineering 339 master's degree students, Graduate School of Agriculture 186 master's students, Graduate School of Bio-Applications and Systems Engineering 64 master's students, 37 students from the Graduate School of Technology Management, and doctoral degree holders. Graduate School of Engineering 44 doctoral students, Graduate School of Bio-Applications and Systems Engineering 11 doctoral students, United Graduate School of Agricultural Science A total of 1,623 students, including 40 doctoral students, have been awarded degrees by the university. When you earn a bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree, you have taken a very important step in your life and you feel a great sense of accomplishment. The fact that we were able to put together each dissertation is the result of your tireless efforts, but I believe that it was not created by you alone. Supervisor, I think I had the cooperation of many people, including professors in the department, seniors in the laboratory, and my compatriots. In addition, the understanding and cooperation of the family must have been significant. Please express your sincere gratitude to your family, friends, and associates who have supported you in various ways. We, the faculty and staff, would like to congratulate you and express our sincere gratitude and respect to those who have supported your growth, and share the great joy of today's sunny day. When I say that there are many people who are grateful, it means that I am receiving various forms of support from many people. It's a real blessing to have friends who can influence each other. Sometimes they would support you, and sometimes they would correct your selfish thoughts. Please continue to keep in touch with the people you have been involved with, maintain a network with many people, and strengthen that network even after you go out into the world.
From April, some of them will go on to graduate school, while others will enter the workforce. For those of you who have taken the break of graduation and completion and are moving on to the next step, I believe that you have grown significantly at our university. In particular, I am sure that those of you who are completing graduate school have actually been involved in research at our university and have had a variety of experiences that cannot be experienced by classroom lectures alone. It would have been fun. You must have talked with your friends for a long time, argued with them until you were satisfied, and realized that you were alive. On the other hand, you must have worked hard to achieve your major goals, such as examining the research results obtained through your own efforts from various angles, constructing your own thoughts, compiling the results and presenting them at academic conferences, and submitting papers to specialized journals and having them published. I think there were a lot of tough times. If you disagree with your friends or supervisors, if your experiments don't go well, or if you don't get the results you want even if you try, or if you can't do it anymore? You might have wondered. But is it the happiest life when everything you do goes well? I don't think you were just hoping for things to work out. Human beings make mistakes and grow by getting discouraged. It's okay to make more and more mistakes that don't bother others. We try not to repeat the same mistakes, we try, and we still fail. It doesn't get any more challenging. It's the same for everyone who is going to enter the workforce, and everything you do can't go well. There will be a lot of failures. A glass heart that cannot be recovered after failing even once is not suitable for graduates of our university. It is said that your heart beats 2 billion to 3 billion times in your lifetime. You are born with a flexible heart that does not give in. Please live in a resilient and flexible society. Even if you keep failing, you can finally find success. Have the tenacity to not give up until you succeed. Sometimes, success may not be waiting for you as an extension of what you originally thought. Don't forget your original intention to take on the challenge, don't be afraid to take a detour, but rather enjoy the challenge so that you are "excited" about what will happen. On the other hand, think carefully about the methodology for success. Arbitrary thinking that ignores the rules is not science. Earning a degree doesn't just mean that you've acquired specialized knowledge. Your future is to strive for the happiness of mankind and for the peaceful progress of the earth with a broad education and a high sense of ethics.
Now, graduating doesn't mean you're going to lose touch with university. I think it would be great if we could maintain a stronger bond with the university and build a relationship that inspires each other. In the future, when you return to our university on occasions such as Homecoming Day, school festivals, or alumni reunions, please tell us about your recent activities and failures. Please tell us how you managed to achieve success through that failure, and what you are currently trying. We will continue to strive to be your alma mater a proud home and to support you at any time. All faculty and staff will work together to become a competent university that is useful to the world and recognized by the world, and will strive without fear of failure.
We hope that all of you who leave our university will spread your wings to the world and spend fulfilling and exciting days, and that your exchanges with our university will be meaningfully deepened. I hope that the last memorable graduation ceremony of the Heisei era will be a glorious ceremony worthy of your beginning, and I would like to congratulate you on the conferral of bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees, and wish you all the best in your future endeavors.