Changing the Trajectory of a Stranger

One of my highlights this year was the opportunity to give the commencement speech at Oklahoma State University for the 2017 graduating class. My first thought when I got the call from President Burns Hargis was, "What in the world do I have to offer these graduates?" I said yes but I had no idea what I wanted to talk about. Instead of giving old quotes and lengthy history lessons about what it was like "back in my day", I'd just speak from the heart.

The focus of the talk was to share how people in our lives can alter our destiny. My life trajectory has been changed by amazing people and total strangers. I feel teachers have a huge impact in that role for their students.

A few days before graduation I had a wild idea to check off another one of my bucket list items. For almost 10 years I've had a goal to put a stranger through college. I could never figure out how to structure that since so much could happen during the time they were in school. Graduation is perfect, they have already done the hard work and now we could send them out in the real world ready to work.

The OSU Foundation went into action to find me a student and it was awesome meeting her for the first time when she stood up. I hope this sparks others to do similar things at other Universities.

Here is a video if you want to watch it :)