Monday Convocation | Kyla Mitsunaga ’96

January 13, 2017

What passion do you want to pursue at Cate?
What mistake have you made and what did you learn from it?
What is one thing you’d like to do to change someone’s life?
Name three people at Cate for whom you are grateful. Tell them.

Students bent over the tiny auditorium desks on Monday, trying to answer these questions. Launched by Kyla Mitsunaga ’96, the questions punctuated her Convocation presentation, allowing students to participate in Kyla’s mission: what does it take to be happy?
Kyla characterized her life journey as it began during her years at Cate, where she learned the lessons that brought her to today, teaching at Yonsei University in Seoul and presenting her Happiness Workshop at TEDSeoul and around the world.

For Kyla, happiness and learning are intimately linked. She offered the story of her life as a series of lessons: the moment Mr. Wood sent her a note in the aftermath of a disciplinary instance; the moment she connected with former headmaster Peter Thorp in Rwanda; the moment she became friends with a teacher. Kyla was high energy as she spoke, skipping back and forth in front of the stage and emphasizing her points with wide smiles and enthusiastic thumbs-up.

In her acting debut in the Hitchcock Theatre, in her prize-winning speeches to her Cate community, in the memories captured in her time capsule and shared on Monday, Kyla explained her emotions at the time and now, demonstrating the ways that both successes and failures add up to a life of happiness. The students were intrigued. “The Convocation was interesting because it was really different than usual,” said Israel Sanchez ’19. Isabel Tarafa ’18 concurred, noting that Kyla’s remarks were “really personal” and therefore easy to relate to. Kyla spent several days at Cate, participating in Sophomore Seminar and hanging out with friends and former teachers. Her message is one the School heartily endorses: learn things, be happy, and servons.