Texas A&M University

Commencement speech

Howdy! First off I would like to welcome all of the family, friends, and visitors we have here today to Aggieland. However, in this moment, more importantly I would like to congratulate each and every one of you who are becoming Former Students of Texas A&M University today - what an incredible honor.

The American Poet Oliver Holmes Sr. said, “Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.” Texas A&M is our home. For so many of us it was the place we took our first steps into adulthood. It was the place our parents dropped us off at our dorms and tried not to let us see them shed a tear - or two. It was a place where we slept too little, we yelled until we lost our voices, we ate one too many pizza rolls, and we glimpsed the limits of our perseverance - and sometimes what felt like our sanity. However I do not think I am alone in saying that I was surprised at how quickly I felt at home in Aggieland.

You see I did not grow up an Aggie but when I arrived here as a freshmen it did not take long for me to realize just how truly special this place is. The first time I “sawed varsity’s horns off” with thousands of other Ags in Kyle Field was at the Rice game in the Fall of 2013 and I vividly remember it sending chills down my spine. That feeling, even 4 years later, has never dimmed and if anything each time I link arms with my fellow Ags standing next to me I grow a little prouder to be a Fightin’ Texas Aggie.

In my time at Texas A&M I studied Urban and Regional Planning in the College of Architecture. I know many of you studied in the Colleges of Public Health, Nursing, and Geosciences. I am sure you had similar experiences in that I know your professors not only prepared each of you for your next steps in life but poured into you individually. I personally experienced this through dinner invitations at their homes, encouraging emails, eagerly sponsoring my research, or just daily speaking life into my dreams and my abilities. They have been some of my biggest supporters and it is not lost on me how unique it is to have such invested and caring professors and faculty in college. Texas A&M has that type of culture and it is a culture that helped me grow not only academically but also personally.

On the last day of my Land Development class in the Fall of my junior year our professor, Professor Booth, described the difference in being an Aggie is that we do not just know what we are doing but why we are doing it. He spoke of the importance of knowing your motives & that true character and achievement is not found in our resumes but in how we treat those around us. He handed us each a card with five questions on it. Questions to ask yourself when you worry about your heart or your motives behind the things you are doing. The questions were:

● Am I leaving this world a better place?

● Am I behaving ethically toward everyone around me?

● Am I a good role model for my family?

● Am I placing the spiritual and the moral above the material?

● Am I always striving for excellence?

He gave us these questions to ask ourselves when we start to place our identity in our grades or our performance at our jobs. Professor Booth reminded us that our legacy is not in our work but in our character. He challenged us to see the answers to these questions as the true measurements of achievement in our lives.

As I stand here today I am incredibly thankful that I attended a university that did not just instill information in us and produce more people to enter the workforce but instead instilled a heart for knowledge, honesty, morality and service in its students . A university that placed equal importance in the Aggie Honor Code and Core Values.

Wherever you are going after today and whatever new adventure you are embarking on I challenge you to be known for and to represent our six core values - excellence, integrity, leadership, loyalty, respect, and selfless service.

Today we are graduating. Today we become Former Students of Texas A&M University. So now more than ever we must embody those core values and beliefs. Now more than ever we must ask ourselves those five questions that Professor Booth provided. Now more than ever we must represent Aggieland well. You see because Oliver Holmes was right - home is where you love and you must represent what you love well.

I will represent my home well until “here” is said on my behalf because I am very proud and honored to be a member of the Fightin’ Texas Aggie Class of 2017. Congratulations, good-luck, God bless, and GIG’EM AGS!