Speech: on the occasion of your investiture as Doctor Honoris Causa (August 25, 1986)

Abstract

When the Rector was kind enough to visit me in my office to inform me that the Academic Senate had given me the title of Honorary Professor of this University, I experienced one of the most pleasant surprises of my life.
Honestly, for almost half a century of teachers, I never had in mind that I would receive honors for my work, because it has always been quite satisfaction in my modest educational work to be in touch with young people, their efforts, their longings, and their ambitions.
I started very young, barely graduated from Bachelor of Humanities, to serve the Chair of History at the Lyceum of Costa Rica who entrusted me interimly with my illustrious and always well-remembered Master, Don Alejandro Aguilar Machado, when he was appointed Deputy Secretary of Foreign Affairs during the Second Administration of Don Cleto González Víquez.
That opportunity determined my future teaching career because my first students, most of them barely younger than me, others of the same age and even some older, made my work easier because they attended the lessons in an environment of friendship, but also of order and work and when it came to qualifying them there were no protests when the grades were not good.