‘Let’s move mountains’: Sage advice from Dr. Suess

When I graduated from high school, my next-door neighbor gave me a copy of Dr. Seuss’ “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” as a graduation gift.

I had read the delightful book as a child, but as I read my new treasure as an adult I began to wonder where my college experience would take me.

I had no clue as to the journey I was about to embark on.

My time at Liberty has included time in communist China and an unforgettable summer in Washington, D.C.

Both experiences taught me that nothing in this world is really as it seems.

Everyone enters his or her college days naive to a certain degree. Most people exit the challenge of the undergraduate curriculum a tad wiser in the ways of the world and prepared for life’s next set of challenges.

If you had asked me the summer after I finished high school what my plans were after I finished college I would have told you I would be heading home to write for my hometown newspaper.

Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought I would be moving to Washington, D.C. to begin a career as a Capitol Hill reporter.

My dad has a saying, “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.”

The Lord must have chuckled when he heard me planning out my future. His plans for are far better than anything I could have ever dreamed of myself.

More than my trip abroad and time spent in our nation’s capitol, my journey took place in the quads and the classroom, with roommates and friends who would teach me more about life than I could have learned in a classroom.

Professors were not only teachers, but mentors whose demand for excellence, not only in the academic arena but in life, made me a better person.

I arrived at Liberty eager but unsure.

I am leaving Liberty accomplished and grounded in who I am and in what I believe.

Four years have come and gone faster than I could have ever dreamed. I remember counting down the days to begin my college experience. As I write, my remaining days as a student are numbered.

College has been a seemingly never-ending gauntlet of exams, papers, projects and, for my fellow journalism students and I, writing articles. However, the experiences I will remember are not the hours spent in the library. Rather they are the laughs I shared with the other girls on my hall. The laughs quickly transformed into lasting friendships, both on my hall and with the people I met during my time spent working on The Champion. I will dearly miss my fellow staff members.

I close with the ending from “Oh, the Places You’ll Go.”

“And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)

KID, YOU’LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!
So…
be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray
or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O’Shea,
you’re off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So…get on your way!”

Fellow graduates, let’s go move mountains.