"Promoting the well-being of the Radford University Black community..." Written and delivered by Richard Tillies, II
Database Specialist, College of Graduate and Extended Education
Good evening faculty, staff, members of the African-American Faculty and Staff Association, friends, family, and future graduates. I am greatly honored to speak this evening, and I am grateful to the African-American Faculty and Staff Association for affording me the opportunity to offer some “words of encouragement” to the graduates in attendance tonight. Before I begin, I will share some information about myself.
I graduated from RU in 2001 with a degree in computer science (that department has been renamed Information Science and Technology). While I was here, I was a Quest Assistant in 1998 and joined three honor fraternities. Since graduating, I worked for an internationally-known defense contractor as a software engineer and worked in sales for a national cellular phone provider. Currently, I am the Database Specialist for the College of Graduate and Extended Education, and I teach computer courses at a business college in Roanoke.
When asked to speak tonight, I knew I wanted to say something profound, something important. But I also knew that you didn’t want to listen to a guy who is four years out of undergrad tell you that same things that your parents have been telling you all your life. So with that in mind, I’ve compiled a short list of things that I learned in college and since I’ve graduated. I hope some of these things apply to your own lives and you can take something away from what I tell you tonight.
5. I could survive on ramen noodles and Kool-Aid if my financial situation took a catastrophic turn. And I am usually much more functional at 2:00 in the morning than I am at 8:00 in the morning. Anyway, that was the case in college. Now I can barely stay awake to watch all of CSI: Miami. That’s a byproduct of having to get up at 5:30 every morning to be here on time.
4. I don’t like living at home. Not after living on my own. It was ok going home for the summers before I knew what a “paid internship” was. But I walked in December 2000, but still had a capstone project to complete. So I sublet my apartment and moved back home until I finished that last requirement for graduation. I still had my old bedroom, except that it had teddy bears all over the place… and a pink comforter. And my stepfather made it unbearable… he would do things like… he would bag up the trash and put it in my doorway. And my poor mother was caught in the middle, trying to play referee between her only son and the idiot she married. Eventually, I finished my capstone and moved away that summer. But I told my mother that I’d rather buy the house across the street from her than have to live there again.
3. MOST of my education was obtained outside of my classes. The classroom teaches their students the concepts in business administration, criminal justice, and computer science for exampler; those are the concepts necessary to perform a job and be competent in that position. In college, I learned people management: I learned how to deal with fifty-eleven different types of personalities. I also learned time management: life might be so much easier if there were 31 hours in a day and nine days in a week. And I learned money management: who knew $5 could last so long?
2. The work world is unfair. There will be a time in your professional careers where you work for someone who is not as educated as you are, or as intelligent as you are, or who has less people skills than you possess, or who had a lower GPA in college than you did. I don’t really have an answer for that one; ask your mother. Regardless, I look back and realize that college was the best four years of my life, despite the tests, and the papers, and the stress, and all the “drama”. And I’d do it all over again. And I’d do it the exact same way.
1. I can do anything that I put my mind to. Period. There are enough statistics to tell us that you shouldn’t have gone to college. And even if you lucky enough to go, you weren’t supposed to finish. If you did finish, you must have majored in something like underwater firefighting. But as I look at this list of degrees that you will receive tomorrow, that should convince you, if you weren’t already convinced. As you cross that stage tomorrow, and you become part of the very last graduating class to shake Dr. Covington’s hand, remember that there is nothing that you cannot do, if and when you decide to do it. And I’m sure even your parents will agree with me. Thank you.