Senior Speech: Ina Gjika




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  • 2015-05-07 19:21:12
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  Ina Gjika born in Tirana, Albania, is pursuing a double major in Business Administration and Political Science & International Relations, as well as a minor in Economics. During her four years at AUBG she has been active on campus as part of several student clubs and organizations. She has been a student ambassador, exchange coordinator at AIESEC Blagoevgrad, participant and chair of the Blagoevgrad Model United Nations and member of Phi Beta Delta Honor Society. Ina has also been a student representative to the Curriculum Committee and to the Business Department, a writing and finance tutor and a work-study student of the Admissions Office and the Office of Communications and Marketing. Ina is passionate about Finance and Investments and is planning to continue her academic path through pursuing a Master degree in Germany and aspiring for a career in the financial consulting industry. 1904261_1109008399126340_5345312589025324159_n“What do I want to become when I grow up?” This is the question that has been at the back of our minds ever since our childhood and has been behind each one of our decisions. AUBG represents the point where these decisions have unified and our paths have intersected. After four years of exploration and learning, we are today here, gathered to celebrate an important step in answering that essential question for ourselves. Dear Parents and Professors, Dear administration members and Board Representatives, Thank you for being here with us, at the coronation of a four-year liberal arts experience. Thank you for assisting us in our self-exploration journey and for being our mentors. Dear friends, It seems like yesterday when we started our Orientation week, and were sitting on the grass watching our first AUBG talent show. Our self-exploration had already begun. Each one of us has a talent, strong points and passions. Within the liberal arts framework, we managed to express ourselves and experiment different paths. Club meetings, school projects, literature events, theatre plays, jeopardy challenges, documentary screenings, essay competitions, soccer games, and many more, have been part of our agenda from that very first week at AUBG. Did they require dedication? Yes. Hard Work and organization? Yes. Responsibility? Yes. Through following our passions, without realizing, we were internalizing skills essential for our quest in life: finding happiness. AUBG gave us the chance to make each day meaningful, to make our student life count. Today, four years later, I look around and I see a wonderful picture of our enlightening AUBG experience. We have made friends, shared our cultures, learnt from each other, partied together, studied together…. We have taken so much from this community, but at the same time, we have given back to it by committing our energy, efforts, ideas and our love.  Our Biology books would describe it as a symbiotic relationship, wouldn’t they? Through engaging in self-reflection let us make a marketing SWOT analysis of our selves. AUBG has served as a catalyst for us to understand our strengths and weaknesses, opportunities presented and threats. It has given us wings to make optimistic future projections and moreover, to actualize our potentiality, as we have learnt from our Business Ethics classes.  In a mathematical language, AUBG has helped us to identify some of the unknowns in our life equation. For our journalist friends, AUBG has helped us incorporate key sequences in the documentaries of our lives. While, as our Computer Science friends would say, if we query our AUBG database, we would be in front of hundreds of results of beautiful moments cherished. We could also simplify our AUBG experience through economic utilization models. However, this would require so many assumptions, that I am afraid there is not enough time to mention all of them in this speech. After today, our paths will take different directions. Some of us will find prosperous jobs, some will continue their academic career and some will follow some other creative path. It does not matter what we choose, as our society praises diversity. What matters is that we choose something that we love and we are good at; something that makes us happy. Time will pass and I know that we will always look back at AUBG and say: THANK YOU for helping us find out what we want to become when we grow up! We will never forget this place, and we will continue our symbiotic relationship of giving and receiving! Thank you!