ESD Keynote Speaker Garden Of Eden 2024-08-02

Mr. Clark, a proud graduate of Michigan State University and an electrical engineer at Ford Motor Company, talks about the importance of cultivating young minds and the power of love. He shares his own experiences growing up, including having a newspaper route as a child. Despite challenges, he emphasizes the potential for growth and success in every individual. I want to bring up our speaker, who is a proud graduate of Michigan State University, a world-renowned past-technical high school, and despite those unfortunate situations, has risen to be an integral electrical engineer at Ford Motor Company, where he is responsible for 15 patents. He's also a proud father of two, and married for 25 years. So I'm going to bring up Mr. Clark. But I'm going to bring up Mr. Carl Clark, who is going to inspire us in this world. Thank you for being here. Good morning, everybody. It's a pleasure to be here. I started at Michigan State back in 1987. That's 37 years ago. Calvin was my favorite, because I was coming up to him. How long has it been? And that's where I had the chance to meet Dr. Calvin. I call him Dr. T. Dr. T is my guy. And he's poured into my life, and he's poured into the life of you all, for 37 years. So I just wanted to say thank you, Dr. T. I've had a really, really, really busy week, and I didn't take much time out to prepare for people. But I will say this. I'm 65 years old, and everything in my life has prepared me for 70 times the time. Dr. T asked me to give a real talk to you all about my trajectory, how I grew up. We'll talk a little bit about that. But the first thing I want to do is, I want to preach a little bit. I've got to preach a little sermon. How many of you are aware of the Garden of Eden? Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, was placed in the garden. Does anybody know about that? I want to talk about this a little bit. Because, before I get into that story, let me just say this. I do want to impart something to all of the students here today. And I'm going to do that right now. I want to impart the freedom that each and every one of you have to use your mind, to use your brain, to imagine, to think, to explore, whatever it is you want to do in life. You are free to go after it. You're free to think about it. You're free to do it. You're free to do it. Use your imagination. The sky's the limit, as they say. So, I'm imparting that, each and every one of you right now. And I'm going to take the liberty to use my mind right now, as I talk about this Garden of Eden. Maybe a little bit different than what you heard in church. Because I see you all as the center of the story. Now, the Bible talks about man being created out of the dust of the ground. Ash to ash is dust to dust, as they say. We come from the dirt of the ground, and that's where we return. And when I think about the Garden of Eden, this beautiful garden, it's full of trees bearing fruit. All kinds of fruit. Diverse. Diversity. A lot of trees, a lot of different fruits. All good for food. And my mind, you know, I've got it integrated in my whole face, it's always being creative and thinking. And I say to myself, if man is made out of the dust of the ground, and God creates man and puts him into the garden to kill the man, Adam was a farmer. I begin to think about that, and I say to myself that we are the dust of the ground. And the seed gets deposited into the dirt. That's how it works in agriculture. And when I think about this beautiful garden, magnificent garden, I see a lot of dirt, where seeds have been deposited into the dirt. And the role of humanity, mankind, myself, Dr. T, everybody that has come up here to support, our job is to cultivate the earth. Kill the land. That's our job. And when I think about why the garden is beautiful, I hear God say it's beautiful because there's a bunch of young men. You are the garden. And I was talking with Dr. T earlier this week, and I said to him, I said, you've sown the seed, like he's been doing this for a long time, sowing seeds into the dirt. And I told him, I'm just coming to water it to help with the cultivation. And really I'm speaking to all of the parents and loved ones of the children. That's our job. We are farmers. We are cultivating the dirt. But God says that this garden is beautiful. And the thing I do about a seed, even though I don't understand agro, I'm an engineer, I don't understand agropolitics, I don't understand farming, I do know that when you put a seed into the ground, in some kind of way, it sprouts and it grows when it's cultivated. And it produces food that's good for humanity. That's what it produces. So although I don't understand exactly how it works from a scientific point of view, I do know the process works. God is saying that each and every one of you gentlemen in this room, you're beautiful. It's a magnificent garden. And he has put people in the garden to deal and cultivate you. So it's one of the things I will say about a garden, the limited knowledge that I do have, if the garden is not cultivated, you're going to have weeds growing up. There's going to be wild animals, rabbits coming to eat the vegetation that you're trying to grow. And the role of farmers is that we would protect the crop. Make sure it's getting the water and the nourishment that it needs. So that we might feed the fruit. And the fruit of the garden is what you all are going to produce in society. So I want to talk about the seed, because the Bible says that a seed produces after its own kind. And there's all kinds of seeds. Some are good for food, some are not. And the seed that I was talking about when I talked about the seed and sowing the seed, what is the seed? What is the nature of the seed? And why is it important? Well, the seed is called love. That's what it's called. It's a love seed. That the tea and others are depositing their time and their energy and their love into you. And that love will produce after its own kind. And I say that because there is wheat and there's tares, there's other kinds of seeds in our community. And we're here to root out the weeds. Because the weeds are coming for the dirt. And so I say this to you all because this seed is a message, an ideology, it's a concept of love. And when I impart something to you, impart something to you, to use your mind, to think, to explore, it's in the context of exploring what's good, what's right, what's going to help the world, what's going to help your family, what's going to help you. And be aware that there is another seed that wants to take root in your heart. It leads to all kinds of things that we want to stay away from. Drugs, violence, shortcuts, anger. Discard the evil. There's a lot of potential in the seed, I see it. I'm very optimistic for all of you. So I want to go back. Sixth graders, everybody's going to the sixth. I was trying to think back when I was in the sixth grade. A couple years ago. I'm raising my hand for a pretty fraudulent reason. How many of y'all know I've never had a newspaper in your hand? Like I'm trippin' a little bit here. But who's heard of a newspaper before? Okay, a newspaper's like, I'll be honest. I think we still make newspapers. But like, I haven't had a newspaper in my house in I don't know, 10 years, I mean I haven't had a newspaper. But when I was in the sixth grade, I had a paper route. That was my first job. It was really my first introduction into the real world, so to speak. I would get the newspapers from Detroit News. I would deliver them to my customers over my street. $5.50 for a dollar. That's how it worked. I remember back in those days, it was $1.50, $1.40 a week. $0.15, $0.06, and then Sunday paper was $0.50, $1.40. I paid Detroit News a dollar, so I got to keep $0.40. And so that was my first introduction to the real world. I didn't understand it. I was just doing papers. But looking back in hindsight, I was all ages. That was my first job. And I grew up a little bit, I won't say never, but I had some challenges in my life. My father was a dope dealer. He was in prison all of my adult life. I mean all of my childhood, and my mother passed away when I was three. I didn't even know my mother. She passed away. She had breast cancer. She died. I moved up to Detroit, and with my aunt, she raised me the best she could, me, my brother, and my sister. But when I was of age, six, 12 years old, I got a new car. I needed a couple of dollars in my pocket, and that's how I started. And looking back now, I was an entrepreneur. I was a small business owner. I was an independent contractor. I bought papers from Detroit. And I sold them to the customers on my street. And if I wanted to win a trip to Cedar Point, I had to rule new customers. I would go out, knock on the door, selling subscriptions to the Detroit news. And I did that. And after I got those additional customers, I could make an extra 40 cents for each customer. So I'll calculate how much. I get 60 customers, 40 cents. I can make $24, as everybody pays. So I'm running a small business. Then I figured out if I could roll these newspapers and put a rubber band on them and get my bike out, I figured out, hey, I could ride and I could throw them out. Throw them from the bike. I could get jobs done a lot faster. So my engineering mind is now coming into play. I'm trying to solve problems. I need to be more efficient. Reduce costs. Time. I got the engineering mind working. I don't even know what I'm talking about. I'm looking back now and seeing what I was doing. Nobody talks to me. Takes me an hour and a half to do my paperwork. I got to get that done in an hour and a half. I got to take a student. So that's how I started. I would collect on Fridays and Saturdays. I couldn't throw papers at it. Not until they gave me money. One day, two blocks away, there's a bully in the neighborhood and he's 15 or 16. He sees me collecting. I got stuck up. I got stuck up for a month. He was nice. Positive people. Made me check me in. So this is my introduction. This is my real first introduction to what's happening in the world when I talk about the different types of seeds that are out here and the challenges that we go through. I'm just kind of looking back and I'm thinking. As I grew up in the city without a lot of guidance, my brother was telling me, I grew up in that environment. I got older. Nobody was taking my money again. I'm working hard. That's how I grew up. I was really smart but I didn't even know I was smart because nobody told me. Nobody told me I was kindergarten. I didn't know. I used to love to play chess. I had a chess coach in high school and because I loved to play chess, I hung around chess players. I had a coach, somebody like a Dr. T that kind of supported my life and helped guide me down the right path. Led me to Michigan State where I studied engineering. I was intimidated when I went to Michigan State. Majority white university. I probably had a 2.7 GPA coming out of high school because I wasn't focused. I couldn't do a lot of business. I got in Michigan State by the 10th of my 10th. When I got to school, a little intimidated, I buckled down, I did my work. I was still in the streets. I still had a very street mentality. I recall one time I got in trouble in Michigan State with the law. I think that's one of the reasons why I have a strong connection with Dr. T. It's because I, he didn't, I reached out to Dr. T but I got in trouble because I was in the legal system and I needed some help. He saw my potential He didn't evaluate me based on what I had done. He saw me for the seed that was in me and the abilities that I had. Knowing the potential and the power of a seed. So I'm very grateful that he taught me about how I understand. And I made it through Michigan State. I did well. I found an engineering manager at Forbes, global responsibility for our dealer network, all of our software and diagnostics. You go to the car, take the car to the shop, technician, hook up the tools, see what's wrong with it. My team develops those tools and we make it available for the dealer network. That's what we do. During the introduction, he said I had 15 US patents. I am an innovation leader. Because I've, over the years, I've set my mind free to explore, to think. When I read Genesis chapter 1 and I see a garden of Eden, I'm able to reinterpret it into something that's real practical in our lives. It's us. And the seed is the love seed. So my mind is free to think about whatever I want to think about, to pursue whatever I want to pursue. And that's what I do. And that seed, that gift, has been imparted to each and every one of you. And I want you all to think about it, meditate on it, and take it. Another thing that I would just say, the director here was talking about artificial intelligence, CAT-TPT. I want to say to not only the students but the parents and the educators that AI is comfortable. It's comfortable like any business. And when I hear the educational institutions talking about not allowing students to use the tool because it's cheating, I understand that. But AI is not cheating. It's comfortable. And where I'm at in engineering, I have authorized my team of 80 engineers across the globe to figure it out. How we're going to use this tool to be more efficient, to be more effective. Dr. T asked me to write a bio of myself. He said, I've been busy so I didn't have time. CAT-TPT, hey, I wanted to just say I've got two kids. Give me a bio. He turned the bio out 30 seconds. It was not better than what I could ever realize in email. Because we've got to be efficient to use tools. Now CAT-TPT can do a lot more than write a paper. It can solve real problems. It can solve cancer. It can do all kinds of things. But it's going to take people like you all to figure out how to use the tool. So I just want to say to the parents and the educators, again, CAT-TPT is not cheating. We must get our kids into this. And as I've talked to Dr. T and others here, we'll be trying to figure out how to in some way leverage that within this program. I'm talking about it. So those are some of the things I want to say. I'm kind of done preaching. Again, I want to close out how I started. I see the beauty in the room. I see it's already being used. I want to challenge all of the parents and loved ones to cultivate this beauty. We're going to till the ground. And whether you want to be an engineer, which I love engineering. I'm an innovator. But whatever it is you want to do, allow your mind to explore all possible. Use CAT-TPT if you need to help you explore. But explore it. You can do it. You have a lot of potential. Because there's been a great need to enter the positive in each and every one of you. Never, never, never. Again. Thank you.