[BLANK_AUDIO].

Hi.
My name's Darrell Velegol.
I'm professor of chemical engineering at
Penn State
University, and today we'll be discussing
an acronym, CENTER.
Which I use with many of my students and
the professionals here at Penn State.
A number of years ago, my friend
Sebastion, who was in a PhD
lab with me, came to me and said, Daryl,
I'm thinking of changing careers.
And I said, to what?
And he said, I want to sing opera.
Now there are many things you can do with
a chemical engineering degree.
But singing opera is typically not one of
them.
And I didn't quite understand where he was
going with it.
Until one day, he started telling me about
Puccini's Opera Tosca.
And he started telling me about Floria
Tosca and the Baron
Scarpia and then he told me the end of act
one.
When Scarpia sings the famous Arial, Va
Tosca.
And as he goes through it, he gets to the
end of it and he says,Tosca you make me
forget God.
As he's describing it, I'm sitting there
mesmarizied, almost breathless.
And I came to realize something about my
friend Sebastian.
Opera wasn't just something he was going
to do with his life.
Opera was who he was, it was part of his
character.
Now I still had many questions about how
was he going to learn to sing opera and
how is he going to pay the bills during
this time?
And what if things didn't work out.
But I think he had some answers to these.
And as I've worked with students over many
years, many students and professionals
have the same questions.
How am I going to succeed at my job?
How am I going to work in the community?
How am I going to balance family with
work?
There are a number of villains that crop
up when they're speaking and three
of them are these: The first is fear.
You have a fear of, am I going to get the
job?
Am I going to lose the job?
Am I going to keep my relationships?
The second, is a lack of focus.
People want to do often times a thousand
things.
But they're afraid to do one or two
things really well, where they're held
accountable for them.
And, a third one, is that they're afraid
to try and experiment.
They're so bound
up, either in doubts Or over confidence
that there afraid
to run the experiments that will enable
them to move forward.
And as I'm working with my students on
these, we often go through this acronym,
CENTER.
Now in going through CENTER, I want to
look
at a number of statements or questions
that
we might use in order to establish how the
CENTER applied to what you want to do.
And as I go through these, I will say
things like, I am
blank and I will be blank.
And these blanks are the items you need to
fill in as you're going through.
So the first letter is C, which stands for
Character.
I am, Professor of Chemical Engineering.
I will be the best teacher I can be.
The E is for Entrepreneurship.
I take smart risks and run smart
experiments toward my dream of blank.
Toward my dream of
starting a business.
Toward my dream of having a great family.
The next letter is N, which stands for
owNership.
Ownership is, I choose blank.
I choose to have a healthy body.
I choose to get enough sleep each night.
I choose to stay within my budget.
The next letter is Tenacity, the T.
And this says I will hold on in my pursuit
of blank, amidst all difficulties.
I will hang on in my pursuit of starting
my business.
I will have on in my pursuit of changing
my dinner hour.
The next E is for Excellence.
I will commit and focus hard work
toward gaining skill in learning
differential equations.
In learning how to do pottery.
And the final letter is R, which stands
for Relationship.
A relationship is about my family is, my
girls and
my wife.
My home is State College, Pennsylvania and
Penn State.
Who is your family and where is your home.
As you go through these letters, and
practice them,
you will start to understand where your
passions are.
And what your purposes are so that you can
go make change in your area of the world.
This, my friend Sebastian used these same
principles as he was establishing his new
life.
And if you want to read more about that
you can take a look in my book.
But now it's your turn, how will you go
through each of these
blanks and take an hour perhaps to fill in
each of these pieces.
And start on your own to changing your
corner of the world.
Thanks for joining me today.
We'll see you next time.