My advice to the 2012 class
I feel sad at graduations. When I graduated college in 1997, all I felt was sadness and melancholy, rather than joy. I chose not to attend my MS and PhD graduation ceremonies, but I remember I felt sad after both defenses. It turns out, I also feel sad at my students' graduations. I graduated 3 PhD students and a couple MS students with the thesis option. It was always sad to see them depart. This semester, I have been teaching distributed systems to the graduating class (seniors) at my sabbatical institute, Bilkent University. They are bright and talented (for example, Ollaa was developed by 3 of them). For the last class of their semester and their college lives as well, instead of discussing yet more about distributed systems, we walked out of the classroom, sat on the grass outside, and had a nice chat together. I gave my students some parting advice. I tried to convey what I thought would be most useful to them as they pursue care...