Stanford neurosurgery jobs Videos

Good afternoon. Everyone’s probably been sitting here for a long time, huh? Um…I just got here this afternoon so my mind’s somewhere over Iowa. But, a few things…Everyone here I was told is real bright. Is that true? *crowd laughs* Plus I wanna meet Erik later on, which one’s Erik? *Crowd points at Erik* Oh, hi Erik, how are you doing? Um…and a lot of stuff here is rags to riches I was listening back there. So I’d want to be careful about that because there’s a lot of people that have been real successful in other terms but aren’t here cause maybe they didn’t make a lot of money but you wanna listen to very carefully. And one of the things that tends to run through some of things that people here have talked about is innovation and creativity. And if you’re really bright…..You’ve ever thought about what it is to be intelligent? Probably some of you have, right? Cause you meet your friend and he’s pretty dumb and maybe you think you’re smarter and you wonder what the difference is? *crowd laughs* And I have thought about this a little bit myself and one of the things is it seems to me a lot of it is memory. But a lot of it is the ability to sort of zoom out like you’re in a city and you could look at the whole thing from about the 80th floor down at the city while other people are to figure out how to get from point A to point B reading these stupid little maps, you can just see all out in front of you, you can see the whole thing and you could make connections that just seem obvious cause you can see the whole thing. That’s why bright people feel guilty a lot cause they come up with stuff that they just say “Hey, look at this” and other people give’em these dumb awards and they feel…funny. *crowd laughs loudly and starts clapping* But the key thing is that if you’re gonna make connections which are innovative to connect 2 experiences together then you have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else does or else you’re gonna make the same connections and then you won’t be innovative and then nobody will give an award. *crowd laughs* So what you gotta do is get different experiences um…then the normal course of events and one of the funny things about being bright is everyone puts you on this path ,you know ?...to go to high school, go to college. I have heard about some kid that’s 14 and on his way to Stanford and that’s great, that’s sort of out-of-the-ordinary. But you might wanna think about going to Paris and being a poet for a few years, you know?....or you might wanna go to a third world country ,I’d highly advise that, and see people and lepers with their hands falling off and all that stuff…its very much so worth doing. Um, you know?…fall in love with 2 people at once….you know? *crowd laughs and starts clapping* Walt Disney took LSD, do you know that? *crowd starts laughing* He did once and that’s where the idea of Fantasia came from. It’s true. And you can go hear stories about all these people and the key thing that comes through is that they had a variety of experiences which they could draw upon in order to try to solve a problem or attack a particular dilemma in a kind of unique way. And so one of things that you’ll get a lot of pressure to do is to go on one very clear direction and believe in God and all that other stuff ,and that’s great but don’t ever walk by a Zen Buddhist because of that, sit down and talk and buy him lunch. *crowd laughs and starts clapping* One of the things that I had in my mind growing up, I don’t know how I got there was but was that the world was sort of something that happened just outside your peepers and you didn’t really try to change it, you just sort tried to find your place in it and have the best life you could and it would all just go on out there and there were some pretty bright people running it. And as you start to interact with some of these people, you find they are not a lot different than you. Um…the people actually making these decisions every day, they are sort of running the world are not really very much different than you and they might have a little more judgment in some areas but basically they are the same. And once you realise that, you start to feel you have a responsibility to do something about it because the world’s in pretty bad shape right now and I guess one of the things that motivates a lot of people that I have seen that they actually get out and something in any different field is that we all sort of eat food that other people cook and wear clothing that other people make and speak a language that other people evolve then use someone else’s mathematics and we’re sort of taking from this giant pool constantly. And the most ecstatic thing in the whole world is actually put something back into that pool. And I think people from all the fields that maybe heard from here and a whole bunch that haven’t would express the same sort of feeling. It’s the most ecstatic thing I have encountered so I would highly recommend it. Um…and one of the major areas I know probably with all this stuff I might be invited back here next year so I’ll say it now. *crowd laughs* When you pass a certain age, I don’t know what it is, 25, 30 years old, you sort of as a human being inherit the responsibility of being a guardian of the earth for future generations of which you are all a member to inherit and I’m not exactly sure what that means but just obviously that’s the case. And I think our particular ….this particular generation of people that is your guardian is doing an extremely poor job in one area and one area where all of the help that you all can help muster is really necessary. And that is that the chances that this planet can remain in one piece through your natural lifetime is not extremely high right now. It’s fairly dismal and I anticipate having some kids one day and helping them grow up to be sane human beings and you people are gonna be the people that are running the planet when my kids grow up. So would you please pay attention to this problem and try to do something about it because I’d like to see my kids grow up and be able to come here and sit like you and listen to a bunch of funny people. Thank you. *crowd starts clapping*

Great to hear the optimism of tackling major issues in neuroscience !