Please join me in welcoming Joanne Chang.
Good morning.
Thank you Dean Upneja for that really kind introduction.
Thank you BU School of Hospitality for having me here today.
I am incredibly honored to be celebrating this special day with all of you.
Graduates, I join your friends and family and this warm collective of people in congratulating
you on your achievement.
In preparation for today I was fortunate to have had lunch with Dean Upneja and one of
your professors, Leora Lanz, a couple of months ago at Meyers + Chang.
I was eager to learn more about your four years here at BU.
I wanted to know what jobs you were preparing for, and what classes you were most excited
about.
I wanted to learn about you, and who you are.
And, as always, I wanted to eat Chinese food.
The three of us reminisced about our own respective college experiences, and our own graduation
ceremonies.
In talking we realized that none of us could remember our own commencement speaker.
Not one of us.
And that's okay because for one that fact helped me relax about today.
It also made it clear to me that today is all about you and your accomplishments, and
not this speech.
In five, or 10, or 20 years you won't remember me at all, but today what's important is that
you remember how proud we all are of you and how excited we are to be part of your celebration.
My charge this morning is to share some of the lessons I've learned in the last 25 years
as a pastry chef and restaurateur.
Bring a little wisdom to the party, right?
The hard part is to do that without boring you to tears.
So, in that spirit I'm going to keep this short and sweet.
I'm going to frame this as I would most things I do, as it relates to food.
Pretty much every lesson I've learned centers around food somehow, so it seems appropriate
this morning to bring all of these together in one celebratory meal.
Call this my recipe for success, so to speak.
So let's start putting some stuff on the table.
The first dish, fruit kabobs.
And by fruit kabobs, I mean listening.
I think listening is the most important of all senses.
Of course, I'm not telling you anything that you haven't already heard before.
You know that listening is important.
You know it's important to listen to your family, to your teachers, to your significant
others.
Yes, listening is key to learning, growth, community, and of course love.
But I'm talking about listening to your inner voice.
I want you to listen to that voice inside of you that led you to hospitality, and that
is telling you who you are.
On paper I was not supposed to be a pastry chef.
I come from a very traditional Taiwanese family.
My mom and dad emigrated here, got their advance degrees, worked really hard, and sent me
and my brother to good schools.
I studied math and economics at Harvard, I graduated and went straight to work as a management
consultant, and my path was supposed to be relatively straight.
A few years of this and that, and maybe law school or business school.
But something took me out of math and consulting, and my parents and tradition, and led me to
hospitality.
That something was listening to the voice inside my self.
That voice told me that like you I love connecting with people and trying to make them happy.
It was quiet, but persistent over the years.
When I was in third grade I had a teacher I adored, Mrs. Davis.
I wanted to do something for her, so I decided I would make her fruit kabobs.
I scrounged together my nickels and dimes, walked across the park, across the neighborhood
to the local 7-Eleven.
I bought an apple, an orange, and a banana.
I cut them up into small tiny pieces, and impaled them with toothpicks, and then I stuffed
them in a baggy.
The next day I brought the fruit kabobs to Mrs. Davis.
With a huge smile on my face.
I'll never forget how happy she was.
I am certain that as soon as my back was turned those brown fruit kabobs went into the trash.
Think about a banana and an apple marinating with orange in a baggy at room temperature.
But I knew nothing about that.
Only that I felt joy and love and happiness, and I was certain she felt the same.
Fast forward many years later when I was studying math in college, and I was going to be a mathematician.
Except, that the work was all over my head.
To alleviate my stress I baked chocolate chip cookies and brought them to the study sessions.
You can imagine that I was pretty popular even though I had no clue what was going on.
My brilliant friends loved my cookies, and in turn they helped me understand fermat's theorem.
It was a win-win, I was part of the team, and I became known as the chocolate cookie girl.
I graduated.
Somebody spoke at my graduation.
No clue who.
I moved on to work for a high powered consulting firm and traveled across the country.
But still, yep, I was baking cookies.
I was baking and cooking, baking and cooking.
Hosting friends every weekend as I tested recipes.
All I thought about was food.
How much I loved to make it, eat it, prepare it, and most of all share it.
These are few examples.
There were hundreds of them.
After a few years in consulting I finally listened to that voice inside.
I called home, I broke the news to my parents, I told my bosses.
I was going to be me and go work in a professional kitchen.
I knew what was going to make me happy.
You all have chosen an awesome industry.
You're about to enter the world with some of the best people.
You've already met some of them here in your time here.
You're going to meet so many more.
Each of you has a fruit kabob story, or a hundred.
Listen to what the stories are telling you.
You've learned what's important in this world.
Making connection with those around you.
Listen to the "why" chose hospitality, and make it mean something to you.
The world out there is really, really, noisy.
Don't ever stop listening to yourself.
Okay, so let's throw another dish on the table.
How about peaches?
And by peaches I mean patience.
Let me explain.
When I was a kid my dad changed jobs a lot.
We moved around from city to city, house to house.
At one point when I was young we looked at a house that had a beautiful backyard with
tons of peach trees.
I didn't care about the house, but man did I want those peaches.
I love peaches.
My dad tried to convince me that we could just plant peaches wherever we ended up living,
and I thought to myself, 'that's not the same.'
We ended up in a small house with a tiny little spare backyard.
The first day after we moved in my dad took me to a nursery.
We bought a peach sapling, and we planted that baby tree in our backyard.
To this day I marvel at the love and wisdom in that gesture.
I didn't get what I wanted.
I wanted peaches.
But what I got was one of the best lessons of my life.
I watered that tree.
I trimmed that tree.
I loved that tree.
For two and a half years.
And then we moved again.
I never got a peach from that tree.
Not one.
But I got something better.
I learned patience.
I learned to watch, and wait, and deal with disappointment.
I watched that peach tree get bigger and bigger, and I learned about believing in my future,
setting goals, waiting, waiting, and waiting.
I learned that I could have the patience, even as a child, of an adult.
I learned goal-setting.
If you want a peach tree you've got to get on your knees, dig a hole, plant a seed, water
it, fertilize it, and take care of it.
And be patient.
Make your mark.
Don't be afraid to start.
Plant that peach tree.
The next dish on the menu, cereal.
I'll explain.
A bowl of cereal to me signifies taking action.
It's a reminder to me not to be fearful to take risks.
Have you all seen the tv series Cosmos?
You may not have seen it, but I'm guessing possibly your parents have seen it.
It aired in the early 80's with Carl Sagan, and explored the universe.
One of the episodes starts off with a guy sitting in his kitchen at breakfast eating
a big bowl of cereal.
The camera pans away, and you see the apartment building.
It pans away again, and you see the island of Manhattan.
It keeps panning away until you see the United States, and then the Earth, and on, and on,
and on.
And finally there's just a little blue dot.
Whatever that guy was thinking about as he's eating his cereal, you realize that he's just
a blue dot in this universe.
We're all just a little bitty speck.
Now that's not to make you or me feel unimportant or insignificant.
But instead, it's to put things into perspective.
I think of this every single time I'm afraid to make a move.
I think of this every time I think, 'I can't do this.
I don't have the skills, or the ability, or the smarts.'
I remind myself that on the other side of the Earth right now somebody is struggling
with same insecurities that I am.
A hundred years ago somebody was facing the same challenges that I am now.
A hundred years from now somebody is going to be dealing with the same issues.
All of my angst, and frustration, and fear.
They're just a blip.
They're holding me back from believing in myself and taking action.
I urge you to have blue dot perspective.
Step outside of yourself, and the things that are chipping away at your confidence.
A different point of view, a little blue dot, might help you see that often what is holding
you back is you.
A last dish in this menu of some sort of success for your post-college life, dumplings.
I'm going to share a story about dumplings in hopes of convincing you of a basic truth
in this world.
And that is, we're all just trying to figure it out.
It's important to learn to give yourself a break and laugh at yourself.
Know that the narrative that you see others presenting isn't always what's really going
on, so don't judge yourself by that.
How many of you this morning were on Instagram or Snapchat?
And how many posts did you glance at that made you think, 'Man, that person's got it
going on.'
It can be really easy to see what everyone around you is doing, and being, and think,
'I can never get there.'
But honestly everyone of us is just trying to figure out as we go.
My first year at Harvard, a total disaster.
I changed my major five times.
I cried pretty much every day.
My second year, I changed it twice more.
I struggled.
A lot.
When I opened Flour, my entire first year, I wanted to sell it.
I'm pretty sure I cried every day of that as well.
I had opened the bakery of my dreams, and yet the reality was every single day was a
struggle.
Today we have eight Flours, a restaurant.
I have people ask me all the time, 'What's the plan?'
I have no idea.
I have a twenty year old company, and no plan.
Go figure.
I share these things with you to persuade you that no life lived is exactly as you think.
But back to dumplings.
When we opened Meyers + Chang I wanted to put my mom's pork and chai dumplings on the
menu.
The one's I always imagined her learning from my grandmother as a small child in Taiwan.
When I was a little kid we made them pretty much every week.
So, I called her up and asked for the recipe, jotted it down.
I went into my new restaurant kitchen, and taught all my line cooks, and off we went.
Christopher, my husband and business partner, could not wait to put this family recipe on
our menu.
Our opening chef practically wept the first time she ate one.
By the time we launched the restaurant they had taken on a life of their own.
The media loved them, mama Chang's dumplings are our most popular dish and if you come
to the restaurant the chances are you are going to eat her dumplings.
So a few years ago I finally asked mom, 'what's the story behind the dumplings?'
I imagined a nostalgic trip down memory lane with her and her mom, and maybe her grandmother.
Mom at grandma's elbow learning old Taiwanese secrets.
'Oh that recipe,' she said.
'I got that from a Good Housekeeping magazine when I first emigrated here.'
I couldn't believe it.
The was definitely one narrative that did not match reality.
You might think that now that you graduated you're supposed to have some idea of what
life is all about.
I'm telling you that it's okay if you don't.
You might look at someone who seems to be all put together, and i'm telling you that
chances are they're just trying to piece it together like you and me.
I thought my restaurant was founded on a family heirloom recipe.
Until I learned that it wasn't.
You have to laugh.
I have to laugh.
We all have to be able to laugh at ourselves.
Fruit kabobs, peaches, cereal, dumplings.
Listen for who you really are.
Be patient, and wait for what really matters.
Take action and don't hold back.
Don't compare yourself to the narratives you see others presenting.
And laugh at yourself regularly.
Today you graduate from college, but the rest of your life will continue to be filled with
lessons and challenges and changes.
And listening to rambling speeches.
You leave BU with four wonderful years behind you, and a community of supporters to lean
on.
Use the experiences and skills, and friends you've made here, to help support and guide
you, and go out and achieve your dreams.
I can't wait, we can't wait, to see what you all accomplish.
Good luck, congratulations.