On Thursday March 28, the “C” room of Lankford Student Union found itself full of students. The reason for the influx of student activity? The chance to listen to Hilary Corna speak about her book “One White Face,” which was a narrative account about her time abroad. Hilary Corna is the founder of liveandworkabroad.org and has spoken at TED talks several times.
The main sponsor of the event was the Student Diversity & Inclusion Council. Co-sponsors of the event included Zeta Phi Beta, Sigma Sigma Sigma, Alpha Gamma Delta and Phi Mu Delta.
Corna’s book “One White Face” has been talked about in Forbes Woman and has been called "The Generation Y version of ‘Eat, Pray, Love’.” It has also been announced that the book has just recently been picked up to be turned into a screenplay, so read the book while you can. There’s a chance you’ll be seeing trailers for it sooner than one would think.
Keeping with the theme of her talk of going against the conventional way, Corna wanted those in the audience to keep their phones on during the talk so they could tweet about it.
Miguel Leal, the Public Relations officer for the Student Diversity & Inclusion Council, said, “We usually have events for every month, like in February we did [things for] African heritage events. In March,since itwas Women’s Appreciation, we thought that Hilary would be a great opportunity.”
Corna was 22 when she gave herself a goal to launch an international career after she finished college. With only a budget of $2000, the goal was to try to find a job before either time or the money ran out.
“The funny thing about dares is that they don’t insure that we will be successful, only by their simple definition that we will have the courage and the boldness to try,” said Corna. “When I was in college as a freshman, I had studied Spanish for seven years, but I had always had this inherent curiosity for Asian culture and specifically the Japanese language. When I got to college though and I said ‘yeah, I’m going to give up seven years of Spanish to start studying a language from scratch,’ how do you think my professors reacted? ‘Are you crazy?’ was pretty much what they said. So I started studying Japanese my freshman year of college, and I got a 105 percent in my first class. ”
Corna’s talk more so discussed the times she had dared herself (and the various success of each one). She revealedtwointerestingfactoids:people do well in the things they enjoy doing, and we prevent ourselves from reaching our true potential.
“I realized something particularly simple in life [after going on to ace the rest of her Japanese courses],” Corna said, “People tend to do well in things that they enjoy doing. Kind of seems like common sense.”
If you had the chance to do something, would you be more willing to do it if there was no chance you would fail? Corna touched upon the importance we place on how others react to our success and to our failures, making it a challenge for dreams to become realities, using a particularly odd example to punctuate her point.
“I have seen Justin Bieber’s movie, I’ll admit, but there is one part in this movie that stands out the most to me, and I still to this day remember and adore,” said Corna. “It’s the story of when Justin Bieber met Usher for the first time. In that story, Justin enters Usher’s office with his agent, and right before they see Usher, his agent says to him ‘Justin, no matter what you do: do not sing for
Usher.’ So what does Justin Bieber do? He sings.”
Life is short. Instead of worrying about the future, focus on the present. Choose the path less traveled, and when inspiration dares you, accept it.
Corna signs a book for Ronnie Brown after listening to her lecture on motivational speaking.
