Editor's Letter

by Enrique Carrión

On Saturday, January 14, I was invited to be the keynote speaker at the 27th Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Awards Banquet at the Classic Center in downtown Athens presented by the Athens Area Human Relations Council. This is the speech I gave:

Good evening. First of all, I want to thank all of you for coming and supporting a wonderful initiative such as this one: helping children get an education.

Also, I want to specially thank Reverend David Nunnally Sr. for giving me the honor to be the first Hispanic person invited to be the keynote speaker at this banquet. It's truly an honor.

I want to start this evening's speech with a quote from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and a conscientious stupidity."

What brings us here today is one of the most important things to any individual. Something that will not only shape his or her life, but also the lives of those around him or her. I am talking about education. Some say that education is an investment. I do agree. Not just because a good education will help you get a better paying job, but it will also give you something that it can't be measured by money: it will allow you to see and understand everything and everyone from a unique perspective, from a rational perspective.

Those who are about to be awarded with a scholarship, will have the wonderful opportunity to keep attending school. But some people say that it's also necessary to attend the school of life, that school where you learn things that are not taught in the schools as we know them. In the school of life we have parents, not teachers. We have friends, not classmates. We learn about the importance of helping others. We learn that one person doesn't reflect a whole race or culture. We learn to define a person for what he or she does, not for what group he or she belongs to or what country he or she comes from. Uneducated individuals define a whole group of people based on what one person does. That's making a generalization. And it's wrong. No matter where a person is from, there are tall people and short people. Smart people and not so smart people. Good people and bad people. So, why blame them all for what one person does. How unfair is that? An educated person will understand this and will only criticize the one person guilty of doing something wrong. Education has given me this rational perspective.

During my senior year in high school back home, my parents asked me what I want to do, what I wanted to study. They wanted me to attend college because they understood and knew the importance of doing so. Neither one of them ever went to college, but they sure graduated from the school of life and, if you ask me, they graduated with honors. My father is a hard working, responsible person and my mother is an excellent, caring housewife. But most important of all, they are good friends of mine. It was actually my idea to try to attend college in the United States. A tennis scholarship allowed me to get a higher education and played the sport I love and I have been playing since I was eight.

Scholarships are very important. They allow people to use their skills to earn their way through college. Some have intellectual skills. Others have music skills. And some of us have sports skills. We are all good at something and it's up to us to use these skills to its highest potential and in our benefit. I used tennis.

Language skills are also important. These days, English is very important in the world we live in and made me realized that in order to become a successful person and be able to travel, meet and interact with others, I needed to learn to speak English fluently. For others it might be Spanish, French, Italian, German and so on.

I came to the states when I was 18 years old. I didn't know how to speak English, but it didn't take me long to be able to have a conversation with others because I interacted with people who spoke English as a first language as well as those like me who were learning it as a second language.

I can't say I struggled or that I went through tough times because I always had the monetary and moral support from my parents who, even though were thousand of miles away from where I was, they were always ready to help and even come see me if I needed them. But I also have to admit that I was responsible enough to attend classes every single day, even Fridays when other students decided to sleep in and recover from the night before. Professors knew this and they awarded the few of us who went to class with extra credit. I also did my homework, I was responsible, polite, and active, becoming involve in many on and off campus activities, which, in the long term, helped me to meet and become friends with people who I can now count on and ask for help when I need them. These off campus activities also helped me to get the job I have now as editor of Eco Latino Magazine.

But we are not here today to talk about me. We are here to honor those who will receive the scholarships and also to honor Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

At the age of five, Martin Luther King, Jr. began school, before reaching the legal age of six, at an elementary school in Atlanta. When his age was discovered, he was not permitted to continue in school and did not resume his education until he was six. Later, he also attended the Atlanta University Laboratory School and Booker T. Washington High School. Because of his high scores on the college entrance examinations in his junior year of high school, he advanced to Morehouse College without formal graduation from high school. Having skipped both the ninth and twelfth grades, Dr. King entered Morehouse at the age of fifteen.

In 1948, he graduated from Morehouse College with a bachelor's degree in Sociology. That fall he enrolled in a Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania. While attending the seminary, he also studied at the University of Pennsylvania. He was elected President of the Senior Class and delivered the valedictory address. He won the award for the most outstanding student, and he received a fellowship for graduate study at a university of his choice.

In September of 1951, Martin Luther King, Jr. began doctoral studies in Systematic Theology at Boston University. He also studied at Harvard University. His dissertation was completed in 1955, and the Ph.D. degree was awarded on June 5, 1955.

Also, I would like to use as an example the life of Rev. David Nunnally Sr. He graduated from the Athens Union Baptist Institute in 1951. Prior to entering college, he fought in the Korean War. Upon returning home after the war, he completed his undergraduate degree at Tuskegge Institute. He also obtained master's degrees from Loyola University and Governors State University.

What's one the things, besides from their devotion to help others, that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rev. David Nunnally Sr. have in common? The answer is education.

They both earned degrees from prestigious universities, but they also used their lives to learn, help and understand others, allowing them to also graduate from the school of life.

My message to you is: aim high, aim for the skies, go on an achieve great things in life, but don't forget that by simply being a good person, a good brother or sister, a good son, an honest , responsible, friendly person will be enough to love others and to be loved by others. And there is nothing wrong with just that.

I ask those who are about to receive the awards to see around you, to meet those around you because the chances are that your fellow students will go on to achieve great things and one day you might need to talk to them for either help or direction. We can all use a friendly hand at sometime or another.

One thing that I learned while studying at UGA is that you can learn more in one month in an internship than in six months in a classroom. Don't get me wrong. Attending school and going to class is very important and necessary in order to graduate and get a diploma, but is also very important to participate in an internship and see, first hand, what happens out there in the real world. By participating in internships while attending college, will allow you to get a head start on the profession you will be working on one day.

As an editor, if one day I have to hire somebody and I have to decide between two candidates and both of them graduated from the same university, both graduated with honors, both are professionally looking people, with great personality and ambition, but one has more experience than the other because he or she obtained an scholarship while in school, then I'll hire the person with more experience. Same goes with knowledge of other languages. In the world we live today, it is important and necessary to know to speak other languages besides English. So, if I have to choose between two people for a job position, and, once again, they are both very prepared but one of them speaks two languages and the other person only one, I'll hire the bilingual one.

We live in a very competitive world. A high school diploma and, sometimes, a bachelor's degree are not enough anymore. While you think a bachelor's degree might be enough, somebody else is preparing him or herself better and getting a master's or even a PhD. and will compete against you and take your job. Knowledge is power, power to take somebody else's job.

I want to finish as I started, with a quote from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important."