Yao Ming doesn’t need a college degree to boost his earning power. The Hall of Fame center is a global icon who made more than $93 million in NBA contracts alone.

But the eight-time all-star was never the kind of person to rest on his laurels. He proved that Sunday by earning his economics degree from Jiao Tong University.

The 7’6 center, seen in the headline image absolutely ruining the view of anyone else sitting along the aisle for the next eight rows behind him, also had the opportunity to address his fellow students during the ceremony.

“At a certain stage in the future, you should try to combine your future with the future of the society, because that’s how you can find larger space for yourself to explore,” said Yao. “Let me quote a famous conversation that happened on a basketball court 11 years ago, ‘This is going to be your league in a little while.’ Trust me, when a man spends seven years in university to graduate at age 38, he knows what he’s talking about.”

Sunday’s graduation was the culmination of a journey that began seven years earlier. The Rockets star was forced to retire from basketball in 2011 due to foot injuries, but he didn’t allow that situation to dictate the next phase of his life. Instead, he kept a promise he’d made to his parents 14 years earlier and enrolled in college.

Though his professional commitments — everything from voice acting to advocacy efforts to save the northern white rhinoceros to owning and operating his former basketball club, the Shanghai Sharks — kept him from attending college full-time, he was able to work with administrators to create a less intense seven-year program. The majority of his classes were one-on-one sessions with professors, a move aimed at preventing him from being a distraction to other students at Jiao Tong. He’d previously derailed one regular lecture when students broke from their seats to get an autograph from the man who was China’s top-earning celebrity for the 2000s.

Yao was the standard of hard work in the NBA, growing from risky No. 1 overall draft pick into one of the league’s most talented big men despite a steep learning curve in the world’s toughest circuit. Sunday’s graduation proved that ethic hasn’t faded as he’s gotten older.