Never Stop Learning and Don't Fear of Learning

C10 Speech, By Ivan Chiang

Toast master, Ladies and gentlemen!

At my 50th years birthday I just passed last year, I was thinking about what is my comprehension of my life. I concluded it to a simple motto: That is: "Never stop learning and don't fear of learning." This motto can describe my passed 50 years of life and will be the guideline of my second half of life. I will share my experience with you.

I was not a smart student in my school days. I had no chance to enter top junior high school or senior high even through hard study. During the second year of senior high, I was pretty ill and miss the final exam, so that I am failed it and had to study one year again. In this second year, I studied very hard to keep my score at top of my class till I graduated. And then I passed the entrance examination for university and entered a famous national university.
To review my study procedure, it is not smooth, but since I never give up, I finally caught up with many smart and better classmates in the end.

In my job career it is the same, I was never a frontrunner at the beginning, but after ten or twenty years, I gradually started to move forward. I owe what I am today to one reason: "I never stop learning."

Another example for me is to learn go game. My father taught me go game at my high school days. After one or two years, my father could hardly win, so he did not like to play with me anymore. After I joined go club in university, I found that my go level was very low, something like nine Gi. When I worked in CPC, I joined CPC’s go club. CPC has a whole company's go contest. Kaohsiung refinery needs to select 5 contestants to participate in this contest. At first few years I could not get the top-five ticket. When I finally won the ticket, I participated in this contest from the lowest丁group. After that, every year I got the top 3 award and moved to an upper group from 丙、乙、甲till the highest Dan group.

I caught up all these players smarter and better experience than me just because they looked at go as a game but I studied it as a knowledge.

Ladies and gentlemen! Most of the adults stop learning just because they fear. They are afraid that people knows his ignorance. They only want to show what they know and never ask about what they didn't know. How frequently you say the three words: "I don't know"? Do you know a very interesting phenomenon that the more people knowledgeable, the more frequently they say this three words. What does it meaning? It means: knowledge comes from your admission of ignorance.

During every learning process people will face failure. Some adults come to my go school to learn go. But after several time lost to children, they gave up. Once I saw a colleague listening to a foreigner speaking. He nodded his head all the time. And after this foreigner left, I asked him what this foreigner said. He said: "I didn't understand a singer word."

Last month my family joined a skiing tour to Korea. We had a skiing course here. Half of the members dare not to learn. They even didn't want to try. Another half put on the ski, took some picture, tried some times. When they fell down, they gave up. Finally, only the one who fell down the most times can learn to ski.

Ladies and gentlemen! Learning is a whole life career, and absolutely not limited to in school. To keep learning make your career successful, make your life colorful, and make you always young. But understanding that is not enough, you must not fear of making mistake when you learn English, not fear of falling down when you learn skiing, and not fear of losing when you learning go. It's the only way you will be able to have a successful learning.

As my C10 speech, I present this motto to inspirit you and myself: "Never stop learning and don't fear of learning."