Hello, my name is Erick Mita. Currently, I am the Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences and I can define myself as a person who laughs, who cries, who loves his daughters and who loves his university and above all, I love this city and this department. Well, ever since I was little, I have always been focused on achievements and we have achieved many things in life. For example, ever since I was a child, I was always the best student in the class, I had the privilege of being the best high school student in Sucre. I was the best university student on four consecutive occasions. From a very young age I started teaching. In 2009, I became a Teaching Fellow after a difficult preparation process and in 2014 the idea of working towards the degree in Commercial Engineering emerged, since it was not accredited. We achieved the accreditation after a lot of work and effort during the 2016 administration, with the support especially from our students, teachers and administrative staff, we managed to achieve that dream. We gave up a lot of nice things for the degree. Afterwards, in 2018 with the support of lots of people in the Faculty we managed to reach the Deanery and direct the destinies of our beloved Faculty with lots of commitment, with lots of effort, with lots of dedication and also responsibility. So far we are continuing to develop that important work. I consider that we give it all our dedication and we sacrifice many things for the Faculty because we want our Faculty to be a leading Faculty, a united Faculty, a model, not just at a national level but also at an international level. As you can see, a large part of my life has been dedicated mainly to serving: to serving the university, to serving our region and above all, to serving our student community, we are always working for them and giving them our best efforts. However, certain events happen in life. A little more than a month ago unfortunately I tested positive for COVID. At the start I took the medicine, I took it easy. However, this is quite a complicated illness, because despite the medicine that I took, I had be admitted in the University Insurance. They subsequently told me that I must be admitted to intensive care because 90 percent of my lungs were taken over by the illness. That was a shock for me, personally. My life was summed up in three calls, I called my parents so they could help and support me through this whole process because in intensive care I was going to be unconscious. I called my ex-wife to take care of my daughters Sofía and Luciana, they are 9 and 7 years old, they are my whole life. And I called the director of the Economics Degree so that he would temporarily take on the position of Dean. As you can see, this has been a very worrying situation. I have been admitted to intensive care and I have been unconscious for four days. After all the respective treatments and recoveries, thank God, I was able to get out of this situation. I am in the recovery stage. I must thank the medical staff and the nurses that have looked after me very well. However, this situation that I have been through, is a situation that makes us reflect. Why? Because in intensive care you are absolutely insignificant. Success is useless. A particular job title is useless. Power or money are useless. We are entirely in God’s hands and we are in the hands of the professionalism of the doctors and nurses. And there, you effectively realise what is truly important. What is truly important are precisely those things that we don’t give importance to: family, spending a moment with people that we love, with our parents, with our brothers and sisters, with our children enjoying those little things that give us life, that we often forget about because we are immersed in the achievements and the goals. What I take away from this situation that I have been through, are various things. One, faith is important. You must always believe in God, because God gives us the strength to overcome the most difficult situations. As well, I must thank our Creator a lot for giving me a second chance to complete the mission that I believe I have in this life. The mission of being a father and the mission of working for our Faculty, for our university. I must also take away another lesson. We must all be responsible in this situation that the world is going through. We must look after ourselves and look after the people around us. Sometimes, as young people, we don’t realise the magnitude and the danger that COVID-19 represents because as young people, sometimes the symptoms are very mild but we really can infect our parents, our siblings or the people that we love the most. So the responsibility is all of ours. Lets look after ourselves and lets look after those around us. Young people are our hope of a better tomorrow. However, I am always going to advise them: It’s very good to focus on our goals. But, dear young people, don’t forget about what is important and what is important is always going to be those things that make you happy. Thank you very much, dear young people, dear audience, thank you to TEDxElGuereo for the invitation. Congratulations to all the organising team for this important event whose goal is to leave messages that are going to transform people’s lives. Thank you very much.
