I want to thank everyone for your awesome support and comments today – it was a very special day for me. Usually, participation in a college graduation ceremony happens only once or twice (and, in rare cases, three times) in a person’s life.
I never wanted a Master’s degree until I watched my best friend Kelsey graduate with a similar Master degree in software at the same school, back in 1991, inspiring me to want to achieve this goal.
For twenty years, I always had a variety of excuses for not enrolling in the graduate program in software (too numerous to mention here). Suffice to say, the real reason was my having a tremendous fear of failure (truly not a good student in HS, and then taking ten yrs to get the undergrad degree). Finally, in summer of 2012, while investigating a six month “certificate” program at Saint Thomas, I said to heck with it, just enroll in the “stupid” Graduate program and stop fooling (f’ing) around.
Going to college isn’t “hard”, it just takes time and effort, and discipline. Same for a graduate degree. I’m not a smart person, I know a whole lot of people way, way smarter than me (the majority of you out there are smarter than me, I kid you not.) And, I’m not the most disciplined either. Fortunately, during these past 3-1/3 years, I finally had the confidence, AND the discipline to do it.
And, I did it (yea).
So, be a little like me, but also, don’t be like me – don’t be afraid of going after something you want. Don’t wait twenty years to take action. Don’t let that fear of the unknown grip you such that you don’t “take action”.
Thank you once again, for your congratulatory words today, and for your support and encouragement during the last three years.
I love each and every one of you.
