Congratulations, Class of 2025! Being voted to give our graduation speech might be the peak of my public speaking career, mostly because I never actually had to do it. Here’s the speech you never had to sit through, you’re welcome, and I’m sorry! :D
Good morning, respected faculty, staff, families, and friends, and of course, to my fellow graduates of the VinUni Class of 2025. Thank you. As we gather here today, I want to extend my warmest thanks to the university’s leadership, our professors, the tireless staff, and of course, our families and friends. I will always remember all the free food sessions: the pizza lunch with Professor David Harrison, the ice cream party with Professor Rohit Verma and President Le Mai Lan, and all the wonderful gatherings organized by VinUni staff, not to mention the creative and spirited student-led activities. These moments reminded us that college isn’t just about studying and deadlines; it’s also about sharing laughter, stories, and sometimes three slices of pizza when you swore you’d only have one. Thank you for making those memories possible.
A year ago, my best friend and I made it to the final round of a scholarship that would have sent us both to the US a year early. We were sure we had it. Embarrassingly sure. So sure that I started packing and shipped my stuff home, already picturing the flight, already telling people I was leaving. Then the results came out. We read them together, and we both did not make it.
I will be honest with you. I do not really remember how that felt anymore. The sting was real, and then it faded faster than I expected. What I remember instead is everything that happened because of it.
Because we stayed, we got one more year here, and that year handed me things I never saw coming. Staying is how I found the company I work at now. I met the teammates who taught me things four years of coursework never could, because we were building real products for real people instead of turning in assignments that get graded and forgotten. Some of the colleagues from those early days have become friends I want to keep for life.
And because we stayed, the two of us got to play one final show at our music club. Four years of college, and that night landed near the top of all of them. Standing on that little stage, playing with people I love, the whole room yelling the words back louder than we were singing them. If I had won that scholarship, I would have been on another continent that night. I would have missed it without ever knowing it existed.
For those who don’t know me, my name is Đăng Khoa, a senior CS student. Four years ago, I came to VinUni wanting to be a researcher, a writer, a singer, and (for one semester) a bartender. Since then, some of those dreams I’ve let go of, a few I tried and was terrible at, and most I just haven’t gotten to yet. I used to believe a dream I haven’t reached is a failed one. I have stopped believing that. Most of mine are still sitting there, and at twenty-two that feels less like falling behind and more like having somewhere left to go.
Here’s what I’ve come to believe, for whatever it’s worth: we cannot always tell which closed door was a favor. We will not know in the moment, and we might not know for years. The only move available to us is to keep showing up the next day, and the day after that, and to let the good moments find us while we are busy doing the work.
A brother from our first cohort, Trung Dũng, wrote this paragraph in his graduation speech that I deeply relate to:
Some of us are chasing Master’s and PhDs, some are climbing the corporate ladder at big companies. Some are even starting their own companies. And some of us are just here giving speeches about how successful everyone else is.
I’m borrowing his words on purpose, because that last line is me, standing up here, lucky to be the one talking about how impressive the rest of you are.
To my friends in this room: thank you for three years I’ll never forget, and for a fourth I almost gave away. I’m so glad I stayed.
And so, I would like to leave you with a poem that I wrote for our second cohort:
Boldly try, loudly fall
Still you learn to stand up tall
In each crack, there comes a call
To live, to love, to risk it all
