50-Years-Magazine-digital

Delivering Excellence for All in Israel 25 From the speech of Tal Burla, BA in Mathematics and Computer Science, at the graduation ceremony, May 2024: " At the end of my high school studies, I enlisted in the IDF as a combatant in the Kfir Brigade. After eight months of basic training and combat training, I continued my academic studies during my combat service (which I began at age 16). The combination of academic studies and combat service was not always easy, and sometimes created impossible situations, guard duty in the middle of the night to which I arrived with questions from assignments that I would write on pieces of paper and put in my pockets, questions that I would solve in my head in my free moments during guard duty. And days when I would get up early in the morning before everyone else and study the University textbooks, until the company sergeant major would arrive to wake everyone up for the morning inspection. This time too, the hard work paid off and I received my second President’s Honors Certificate while serving as a combatant. At the end of my military service, I didn’t stop. I immediately set out on a new academic journey, and while I was a third-year student at the Open University, I began to study for a Master’s degree in Computer Science at Tel Aviv University. Today I am at the threshold of a new adventure. I have been accepted into the direct track for a doctorate in Computer Science, which I am now working on. This journey, which began simply as a desire to explore my abilities and aspirations, took me much further than I could have imagined. I am grateful for the opportunity that the Open University has given me and I am grateful for the place it has brought me to. A journey of a thousand miles always begins with the first step. I took this step when I enrolled in the Open University which enables students to acquire education in many ways and since then, I have not looked back. ”