©1999 by Kurt Nemes

In theory, the ice breaker speech sounds easy enough. The subject of the speech is yourself, so you don't have to do much research. In practice, though, it's devilishly hard.

Think of the challenge-you are forced to go back over your life and pull out all the events, accomplishments and hobbies that would make you sound as interesting and exciting as Jacques Cousteau and at the same time as humble as Mother Teresa.

But the exercise has been good for me, because it revealed to me a pattern in my life, which I had never noticed before, and which I'd like to talk to you about today. And that is why I have named my speech, "When The Student Is Ready."

The title comes from the Japanese saying, "When the student is ready the Buddha will appear." The origin of the word Buddha means "to wake up" and people think of the Buddha as a great teacher. And what is a great teacher but someone who wakes you up? Why this is important to me is because-while preparing for this speech-I realized that I've always been a student, and whenever I most needed it, a person has appeared to either teach me or point me in the right direction. Today I'd like to tell you about three of the many Buddha's in my life.

In my junior year of high school, I became good friends with a classmate whose family was completely different from my own. They all listened to classical music, read The New Yorker, discussed classic works of literature, and studied languages. This opened up a whole other world for me. I felt so uncultured in their presence that I devoted myself to turning myself into an "intellectual." I read voraciously, bought tons of classical music, and studied the works of great artists.

This became a problem, though, when it came time to go to college. My three older brothers had gone to a state university that had good math and science programs and it was expected that I go there. What's more my father was convinced that computer science was the wave of the future, so that's what I enrolled in. I was profoundly unhappy. It seemed so dull compared to the world of art and literature I had come to love. That is when the first Buddha showed up.

One day after my biology class, the teacher singled me out from a lecture hall of over two hundred students and asked me to come to talk with him. He listened to me as I explained my dreams, ideas, and dissatisfaction. Then he told me that I had to look really hard into myself to find my true desires and then follow them. At the end of the semester, I transferred to a liberal arts university and went on to major in French and then got a masters degree in teaching English to speakers of other languages.

That degree took me to Algeria in 1980, where I taught English at a technical institute. There I met another Buddha. The school provided me with an apartment, which I shared with a fellow ex-patriot from Michigan. He had lived there for several years and had figured out all the tricks to survive in a bureaucratic socialist country. From him, I learned how to be self sufficient, but he gave me another gift as well. One day, he told me that the Fulbright foundation was offering scholarships to do teacher training in English as a Second language in Italy. He knew of my love of Italian movies and told me to apply.

I applied-and won! For the next two years, I lived in Naples and Rome and traveled extensively throughout the south of Italy. In Naples I met a woman, who was teaching English at the British council, whom I convinced to marry me. When my two years were over, we returned to the states and after getting another masters degree in educational technology, I ended up here, at the World Bank teaching people how to use computers. That job brought me back into computer science, and now I manage the quality assurance process for the Bank's Enterprise Computing Network.

Some of you know that I teach Tai Chi here at the Bank. How I got to that point is the result of meeting the third and last Buddha I want to tell you about today.

About two years ago, this past September, I read an announcement in the Bank's weekly bulletin that a new session of Tai Chi would be starting for beginners. Something told me to go. There I met a remarkable man, master Quyen Tran, who has been leading a class here for over 10 years. Mr. Tran comes from Vietnam, and though one of the most important financial analysts at the IFC, he is a very humble and unassuming man. His teaching technique is as old as the hills-you follow a master, learn by doing, observing, and practicing. It is a type of teaching which has almost died out in the West, except in some of the trades. Once upon a time, this is how all knowledge was passed down. Not only is it a transfer of knowledge, it is the building of a relationship.

It turns out that Tai Chi has been the one activity that has really brought the two parts of my being-mind and body-together. You must use your mind and body together, and you can't focus on anything else. The more I practice it, the more I find an increased ability to concentrate, to let go of stress, to figure the right way to treat people and the right answers to the problems and challenges that life and work throw up.

So in conclusion, I would have to say that though doing this ice breaker was very hard, it made me, for the first time ever, find a pattern in my life that I had never before seen. That pattern is that I have always been a student and that whenever I most need it a teacher will show up. The trick is to always be ready to rely on the help of others. Just as when I came here and the alumni toastmaster presidents helped me prepare for the table topic competition. Or as the Japanese proverb goes, "When the student is ready, the Buddha will appear."