Imagine for a moment that you don’t know how to walk, because you never learned to. Your life would completely change without this ability. That’s the power of knowledge. Knowledge is something fascinating that comes in different forms: there’s acquaintance knowledge, which is the way you know me and I know you. There’s factual knowledge, the reason we all know we are currently in El Salvador. And then there’s procedural knowledge – the kind that allows us to walk, speak, and function. Now imagine a life without any of those. We’d be powerless - unable to connect, act, or even understand where we are. That’s why knowledge is more than just information, it is the key to growth, success, and even survival. Today, I want to encourage you not only to seek knowledge, but to truly understand and apply it, because only then does knowledge become power.

Knowledge is power – we got cultivated this fact ever since we were kids. We were put into kinder garden to learn things, we were then put into elementary, which was followed by high school, and we are currently on our way to college, why? To gain knowledge. Why? Because knowledge is power, and everybody knows it, everybody knows that the more we know, the more doors we open for success. But, if everybody knows knowledge is power, why does our society limit itself to the knowledge we get at school? Why do we settle with knowing textual facts, instead of making the most out of these facts by understanding how to apply them into our lives? Our generation drifts further and further away from sources of knowledge. For example, most of us limit ourselves to reading the books assigned to us at school – and sometimes, not even those. We conform to memorizing definitions and formulas, but we don’t bother to truly understand them so we can apply them into whatever question might come up on our exams.

I have recently realized that just memorizing and knowing facts is nowadays not enough. Last year during my sophomore year, I used to strive on my history exams. Sometimes, I didn’t even have to study – I knew the exam would be multiple choice and that I just had to find the most logical answer. With this perspective I walked in to my first history exam as a junior. I barely studied, was confident that I would do well just knowing general facts about the First World War. Boy was I wrong. I didn’t even reach half of the passing grade. That’s when it truly hit me that to do well on this exams, and the exams of all the rest of the subjects, really, I had to understand the content so well I could apply it into an effective answer to whatever the questions could demand. I changed my approach to studying, focused on understanding, and got a 9.2 in the last history exam.

So, knowledge doesn’t automatically become power once we acquire it – you have to apply it, plug it into your life. It is not enough to read a lot if you don’t understand and learn from what you are reading, to then apply that new knowledge in your life. This concept, called “phronesis” (practical wisdom) was introduced by Aristotle. It is the idea that true power comes not just from knowing something, but from knowing how to apply it in real life. Doctors, other than knowing how things in our bodies work, have a job that requires them to apply that

knowledge in real-time, high-stake situations. There’s a huge difference between knowing that when a person stops breathing, oxygen needs to be delivered to the lungs, and to actually know how to perform an emergency intubation under pressure and within seconds.

I encourage you all to actively seek knowledge, and to consolidate the power it gives you by understanding how to applying it in your everyday lives. Consider my speech an invite to seek knowledge but go beyond that: turn what you learn into something that can shape your life.