Rede von START-Vorarlberg Stipendiat Yalcin anlässlich seiner Aufnahme in das Stipendienprogramm am 30.11.2023
Welcome dear Sponsors, Start-Team and Friends
I hope you all are doing well and are ready to hear my speech in english. I know it’s not what everyone is used to or even like to hear, but bear with me, it’s going to be interesting.
Let me start from my childhood first. As a young boy I wasn’t quite like the other children. Growing up in a household, in which mental abuse from my father was common, I had a different view to the world. You wouldn’t see me playing with classmates or share common activites with them, but rather find me question and be aware of my surrounding. If that’s being more mature or alarmed, can be left as a question mark. Yet, there is one thing I was able to take with my from my father and that’s his computational skills. Young me always had an eye on latest and greatest technologies. So, when I realized that I didn’t have an fancy iMac at home, I decided to built my own. But not the way you imagine. I grabbed some cardboard, paper and colored pencils and got to work. I drew the operating system of the bitten Apple and formed the body of an iMac out of the materials, et voila. A custom made, no-performance iMac. Yeah… It only showed the desktop on the screen. I guess it had a power source all the time.
Now why does that information matter? I’ll get into it in a minute.
On a Wednesday in November, my mom told my brother and me to not return back home and wait for her to pick us up, because she had begun the process of divorcing my father. In the early 2016, my mother successfully divorced my father in the court room on the infamous 14th February. Aka Valentines day where most people don’t try the be separate from their loved ones.
Fast forward to now, I had to cut my contact with my father due to the barrier of understanding each other. Throughout the years I have tried hard to not resemble him, I tried to not behave or look like him, which in my opinion I was able to do so, yet I learned something else in the meanwhile which I would like to share with you.
The moment we try to be different from a specific person or a thing, we actually get even closer to that. The more we try the more we think about it and don’t know anything else, besides from what we are actually trying to. So, the solution to this specific problem is to find something or specify a target to crave for. Creating an ideal persona will also do the trick. In my example, I have chosen a certain lifestyle with gratitude, respect and an open mindset. These targets weren’t easy for me but realistic enough to achieve. On top of that, none of these things were attributes my father was either able to achieve or had.
My second point, which I want to underscore profoundly, is that your future, irrespective of your age, location, or current circumstances, is firmly within the palm of your hands. The power to decide who you want to become lies solely with you. I understand that this realization might cause some stress, but it’s important to be gentle with yourself. Since the responsibility of shaping your own destiny can be rough, it’s important to recognize that personal growth is a journey, not a destination. The path ahead may seem daunting, but remember that you posses the resilience and strength to navigate it.
There is one word that I think people underestimate a lot is creativity. Creativity isn’t something you can force and many people think that they don’t have much of that. Yet I have to break it to you, you are wrong. You might not be good at drawing or picturing your thoughts, but everyone is different and so is your creativity. It is unique and key in who you are. It is that essential element, that I thought I couldn’t have but certainly do have. I express my creativity through a computer, designing apps and websites, which in the end got me working at vmobil. Our local organization that helps you make your journey easier. Last summer I presented them my art of a unified mobile application for a better navigation in our daily life.
To end my speech, I want to say that regardless of your past, your journey, it is still you who is standing and you have the power of shaping your upcoming journey.
Yalcin