First last lecture - Dont Play Small by Frank Flynn

Here comes a series of my takeaways from each of the last lecture that I mentioned in the previous post.

Starting with the 1st lecture by Prof Frank Flynn, I must embarrassedly admit that while this was my MOST favorite lecture of all (for various reasons), I did not take any note during this first session.

Some reasons why I really liked this first lecture:
- Prof Frank Flynn is an amazing amazing professor, with great sense of humor, fantastic charisma, a hard-to-beat presentation skill, and most important of all - a great inspiration for us (and for me).
- This is the very first last lecture that is organized for us, the outgoing class of 2011. Thus, we all came with very excited feeling - excited to hear what our beloved prof has to offer before we leave school, excited to see what else he can inspire us (after so much brainwash we got during the 2 years here). Needless to say, Prof Flynn succeeded beyond our expectation. This is again an embarrassing moment to admit, but I even got a tiny shed of tear walking out of the session - as i realized how much more I would miss this place, missing my amazing professors and a group of friends that have impacted me so much

Yet I didnt take any note... Reason was because, i didnt come in expecting there's any much more that I need to write down, and that I can remember it all. Proved me wrong apparently...

These are a few things I still remember on top of my head:

- The lecture theme is "Dont play small" - and this captures it all the essence of what Frank wants to leave us with. He reminded us why we all came to GSB, what matters to us, and how much we will lose and fail if we dont follow our heart to pursue our passion and do what matters most.
- There's no better time to take the risk than now when we have the least to lose (or so he said):
The risk of doing non-traditional things that we know we would love doing.
The risk of detrailing from the easy trek that most of our friends will do.
The risk of telling ourselves "let me just do this high-pay job for a couple of years, and I will follow my passion when I am successful", or "let me use this job as a stepping stone to the next thing I am passionate about". That doesnt sound like a bad plan, with the only one caveat - we never know when we are successful...

And yet, he then asked what is the biggest risk if we do fail? He said "there's not much... but the gain is plenty".

"DONT PLAY SMALL" is what he left us all with.

Here is a picture from his lecture (and if you look hard enough, you might notice it's me sitting on the floor in the front lol)

Link to Prof. Frank Flynn's profile:
http://gsbapps.stanford.edu/facultyprofiles/biomain.asp?id=78010309