In my parents' generation, success was measured in numbers-- what grades you got, how much you earned, how secure your job was, how tirelessly you worked. Therefore, when I was growing into my career and education, it was ingrained in my soul that I had to work as hard as I could to achieve something, always reach for that higher number. In a world where you are pushed to your ends just for success, how much of what we do is for our own idea of "success", and how much of it is working just to work?

I think hard work is a square and suffering is a rectangle. All suffering is hard work, but not all hard work is suffering. Many lower-year students have asked me: "do I need do [blank] in order to get a job?". My answer is always the same: there will be many things that help your career, but if you only do the things that you feel you must do, you will always be suffering.

Earlier in my university career, it's easier to confine yourself to the boundaries of what you feel like you need to be or what you should do. I saw success as a rigid shape and forcing myself to fit into it-- trimming away parts of myself that don't match the precise edges. But really, success is not a square, rectangle, or any shape, really. The paths to success are boundless, and trying to force everyone into the same set of equal sides and perfect corners is unrealistic.

Learning from creativity, growth, and always standing back up when I was pushed down, the joy and confidence from the wealth of knowledge I gained pushed me to reach higher in my career. This is when work felt like success, rather than success feeling like work. There was no shape or number I was defining myself into, but as long as I felt I was trying my hardest and always learning, I felt like I was succeeding.

Thank you, UofT, for giving me the space and platform to define my own success-- and for helping me reach heights I never imagined I could.