Telling graduates that their character would determine their fate, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman Morris Chang (張忠謀) yesterday urged them to pursue lifelong learning and the “cultivated qualities” of honesty and caring.
Chang made the remarks in a speech in Taichung at the commencement ceremony of Asia University, which conferred an honorary doctorate of engineering on him, citing his contribution to the nation’s semiconductor manufacturing industry.
Chang said that he was 22 years old and “penniless” when he earned his master’s degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Photo: CNA
However, he saw himself as a man of integrity who cared about society and who had cultivated his honesty and patriotism, he said.
Those qualities have had a positive lifelong impact on him and his career, Chang said, encouraging the graduates to nurture the qualities and to be incorruptible by resisting society’s temptations.
Chang decided — impulsively — to get a job after he was denied an opportunity to take part in a doctoral program, he said.
Photo provided by Asia University
The missed opportunity changed his views on learning, which he had considered just as a means to earn a degree, and motivated him to explore subjects that aided his career as well as those he found intriguing.
It led him to study even harder after work than when he was a student, he said, and urged the audience to pursue lifelong learning in a disciplined, systemic and organized manner.
It is necessary for people to strike a balance between time spent on work, pleasure and family life, as well as on learning, hobbies and rest, Chang said.
The best way to use the 168 hours in a week is to spend no more than 50 hours working and from 20 to 30 hours with family and friends and on your hobbies, Chang said.
Spend 10 to 20 hours learning and seven or eight hours exercising, while using what is left for rest, he said.
He added that the key of life is happiness that comes from a sense of accomplishment and gratification, not from fortune and fame.
In related news, according to a survey released by the online job bank yes123, Chang has been voted the ideal supervisor by college graduates, taking the title two years in a row.
He beat second-ranked Eslite Group chairman Robert Wu (吳清友) and Wowprime Corp’s (王品集團) Steve Day (戴勝益), whose ranking fell from second last year to fifth after his firm became embroiled in a host of food safety scandals.
Chang was the winner of the Global Exemplary Leadership Award by the Global Semiconductor Alliance in 1999 and was named “Businessperson of the Year” by Forbes Asia in 2012.
Additional reporting by Huang Pang-ping
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