My Speech for Academic Booster's Annual Award Ceremony

I delivered this last month. I'd post the video, but it's zoomed in to the point of being creepy. Great job, Dad!

Good evening. First, I’d like to thank Ms. Vredenburg and the Academic Boosters Club for inviting me to speak tonight. I remember attending these awards ceremonies when I was at Northern and actually looking forward to them; not to hear the cool and awesome speaker they always have, like myself, but to see who would win the big money prizes they give out to the top graduating seniors. I wasn’t into it for the money, because, let’s be honest, the scholarships they award pay for like a week of class in Ann Arbor. But oh boy that was a great week of class. Sorry parents – college is expensive. No, I was into it for what it represented: recognition of 4 years of hard work, of AP classes, of sports and extra-curriculars, of begging teachers for extra credit…. The list goes on. I probably only won one because my mom was on the scholarship committee, but seriously, it was a huge honor for me to be awarded one, and congratulations to those seniors receiving one tonight.

In fact, congratulations to everyone here tonight – taking the time out of your Wednesday night, when you could be watching American Idol – that’s a big sacrifice, and I thank you. Don’t worry, moms, Steven Tyler will be there on the Tivo when you get home.

 I thought I’d take this moment to pass along a few pieces of advice.

First, it’s cool to do well in school. I mean, look at Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. He’s worth like a trillion dollars. He can wear t-shirts and hoodies to work whenever he wants because he owns like half of the internet. But he couldn’t have invented Facebook and partied with Justin Timberlake…oh wait that was just in the movie. He couldn’t have invented Facebook, and gotten really rich, if he played videogames all day and all night in his mom’s basement eating hot pockets, wearing just sweatpants and a wifebeater. He worked hard. He read books. He probably still reads books, when he’s not playing Farmville or coming up with new, ingenious ways to sell our personal information to corporations. He also has books written about him, which is perhaps the coolest thing ever.

Bottom line: he might dress dorky, he might act dorky, he might even actually be a dork – but he’s a 27 year old in charge of $100 billion company that he himself created, and he’s living his dream. Unless his dream was to play World of Warcraft all day in his mom’s basement, in which case he severely outperformed his dream.

Some more advice: set goals for yourself. I’m a big believer in the power of setting goals, and setting up a roadmap to achieving those goals. It’s very easy to set out a plan, and then fail to put the work in to make that plan a reality. It’s not always easy, in fact it’s usually not, but the best things in life rarely are. And it makes it that much sweeter when you succeed. And you will if you work hard enough and persevere.

My goal is to walk again someday and I know I will reach that goal. I don’t know when but I know I will. I know because I’m taking the same approach that helped me graduate from Northern with over a 4.0 and graduate from U of M in 4.5 years despite spending the fall semester of what would have been my senior year, before my victory lap, that’s we call a 5^th year of college, a victory lap, despite spending that fall semester in the hospital.

You’ll hit some bumps in the road: I was hurt in Spain, and spent 3 weeks there and 2 weeks back in the States on a ventilator, not being able to speak. They say being bilingual boosts your brain activity and can over time make you smarter. Well, not being able to speak in any language makes you crazy. I couldn’t eat either, I was fed directly into my stomach for 2 months – believe me, it’s pretty weird when you burp and taste the aftertaste of food you didn’t actually eat, but instead had squirted into your stomach through a tube.

Sometimes your goals might not turn out the way you plan. An early goal I set for myself was to get out of Mary Free Bed for a day in September, about a month after I got there, and go see a Michigan football game. The doctors and therapists thought I was crazy, they never let spinal cord patients out that early for trips but I wasn’t taking no for an answer. This was my senior year, first game of the year, I wanted to see all my friends and cheer on the Maize and Blue. Well, this turned out to be the Appalachian State game. Yes, probably the biggest upset in college football history. I’m so glad I worked my butt off to see that one. So that goal was an epic failure, but I had many other small successes along the way. Getting my breathing tube out. Getting my feeding tube out. Getting out of the hospital for good in early November. Going back to school 2 months later on a part-time basis. All of these were incremental goals I had to work to achieve, and once I did achieve them, once I was able to breathe on my own again, once I was able to swallow food again, well, it was hospital food so it wasn’t that cool, but once I was able to get home and then get to Ann Arbor a couple nights per week, those were pretty great moments, and well worth all the hard work. 

And that brings me to my last point: you’ve got to work hard to make it in this world. I’m not going to get out of this chair by sitting in my basement, eating cheetos, wiping all that orange cheeto dust all over my pants, feeling sorry for myself. I exercise 3 hours a day, 3 days a week, standing and walking and lifting weights. The gym I go to is up in Rockford, and sometimes when I’m driving home I almost fall asleep I’m so tired but then I just crank the Justin Bieber a little louder and smile. Not because his voice is silky smooth but because I know I worked hard that day and that’s what it’s going to take to achieve my goals.

So those are the 3 things I want to leave you with tonight – do well in school, because all the really cool kids are doing it, set goals and then put in place a plan to achieve them, and finally, work hard to realize those goals. Do those things, you’ll turn out alright. Thank you.