Given that I graduated from the U of R over four years ago, it's somewhat embarrassing that I just learned what the school motto (Meloria) means - "Ever Better".
I could blame that on being a part-time commuter student, but that's just as much of an excuse as the co-worker of mine that told me he's been too busy to work out for the last 7 years. Hmmm, seven years? That's a cop-out dude. The truth is, I really didn't care. I'm a lot different than I was four years ago, and even more different than when I graduated from RIT eight years ago. I never cared about school motto's or what they might mean or what significance they might have. When I finished my last final, I was more interested in getting down to the St. Patty's Day parade to meet up with my friends and have far too much to drink, than I was about digging deep into how I could be more successful in business or in life or any type of tradition from the school I just graduated from.
Anyways, last weekend was Nancy's official graduation from the Simon School and since I did not attend mine (for some of the reasons mentioned above), I was pretty curious to see what it would be like. It was a great ceremony (although it was not short). The three main speakers were all excellent. They did all speak of the typical cliche advice to graduating students like "Dream big" and "The future's ahead of you" and "Don't be afraid to fail" that I've heard in every commencement type address I've been to.
They all did provide a unique perspective however. One speaker was a Simon School alum who's now a very successful wall-street executive. He spoke of the importance of risk taking, but also of the progress that comes from failure and to take things step by step (I hope my Georgian friend Ivane reads this, he's been telling Kevin and I that for years now), success doesn't happen overnight unless you win the lotto. Another of the speakers was an entrepreneur from India that inherited a real-estate business and led it to grow 125x (not a typo) over a ten year period. He didn't go into much detail about how he drove that growth, but his underlying dream is homeownership for every Indian and that seemed to be the major thing driving him, which was pretty inspirational - his goal wasn't to make a ton of money (although I'm sure he's not complaining), his goal is to make home ownership a reality for as many of his compatriots as possible and make money as a bi-product of that over-arching goal - which seemed like a unique concept.
The headline speaker for me was Louis Zamperini (pictured in the middle above), the subject of the book Unbroken, which I just recently read. If you don't know about his story, I highly suggest that you read this book. Trust me, it will make tomorrow morning's alarm clock going off seem like a blessing. His presence alone was a jaw-dropping testiment to what will-power and perserverence can accomplish. He didn't really need to say much, his life story did all the talking for him. He did tell a few stories and crack a few jokes, which was very inspirational. I hope I'm that active and sharp when I'm 94. While introducing him, Dean Zupan (pictured on the left above) mentioned that he just quit skiing four years ago at the age of 90!
All of the speakers had clearly overcome a lot of adversity in different ways, but none of them were all that interested in talking about their past accomplishments, they were truly looking forward to the challenges that lay ahead and how they would react to them, grow through them and become more successful and better people through them. That was compelling to me. So what I took out of it was Meloria - Ever Better (not just a clever latin word to print on the scotch glasses in the bookstore I guess).
Alright, enough of my nonsensical diatribe, here are some pictures of the real stars of the day:
Nancy getting "Hooded". Another thing I did not know is that each Master's discipline (Arts, Science, Business Admin, etc) has a different color hood associated with it. The other ones are all very colorful, Business is "Drab". Yup, welcome to Corporate America graduates, here's your drab hood, don't worry, it'll match the light gray cubicle and the dark gray Dell Laptop you'll be assigned your first day on the job....
Left to Right - Meghan, Nancy and Laura. These three took almost every class together going part time while all working full time. Not a small achievement by any stretch of the imagination. The day before the ceremony, we had a joint graduation party for these three. Great time for sure. Congrats again ladies!
No comments:
Post a Comment