I ask for your patience and apologize as I shall indeed break into song at some points during this speech. I don’t have the best voice but I learned this song back in my Jesuit secondary school in Nigeria and will love to share it with you, as I believe it still applies today. It is Steve Green’s “Find us Faithful” and we could sing this together, I invite you to join me if you recognize the words.

We’re pilgrims on the journey of the narrow road,
And those who’ve gone before us line the way.
Cheering on the faithful,
Encouraging the weary,
Their lives a stirring testament to God’s sustaining grace.

This verse reminds me of the warmth I was welcomed with during my first visit to this institution. We all know that a good education is non-existent without a suitable social environment- an environment that stays faithful to the goals of learning and service. The warm welcome I received, on that very cold and windy day, led me to believe that this campus was such an environment. An environment where doors were held, by gentlemen for ladies in hurried flights, meals were shared, on Friday nights, out on the streets of Cleveland, and time was spent, in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. A place where I frequently bumped into Dr. Welki and his kind and encouraging words, and listened to sermons from Dr. Simmons, and a place where I got to see these young and energetic professors take on unsuspecting JCU students in games of racquet ball. John Carroll has been faithful to her mission by providing a citadel of learning where education transcends mere book knowledge. Fellow students, it is now imperative that we fulfill our end of the bargain by remembering the virtues of service and leadership in the world around us.

Surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses
Let us run the race not only for the prize;
But as those who’ve gone before us,
Let us leave to those behind us
The heritage of faithfulness passed on through godly lives.

Oh may all who come behind us find us faithful,
May the fire of our devotion light their way.
May the footprints that we leave
Lead them to believe,
And the lives we live inspire them to obey.
Oh may all who come behind us find us faithful.

As we go out to continue to engage in the politics associated with the journey of life we must carefully and critically analyze not just the facts and figures, but who and what really matter: who we are advocating for, working for, what we are living for. As our John Carroll education has taught us, let us stand as a “testament to God’s sustaining grace,” running the race “not only for the prize” so that those coming after us are inspired to do the same.

How you may ask? I know that many of you showed up for those core classes in Philosophy and Religion and took notes in courses pertaining to ethics and morality. In these ways you may have understood the Jesuit mission; or you may be indifferent to the liberal education and the Jesuit mission (I hope not), I also hope you are not indifferent to a better and more just world. As such, I ask you to strive for change – to work to carry out the changes your knowledge and experiences have made you envision or visualize.

I am not asking that you trade in your capitalist philosophies for socialist ideals or that you exchange your realist views for idealist perspectives. I am not asking that you change your beliefs; I only ask that you use your talents and gifts to act considerably and committedly, and that you do so with compassion and character.

Some of you are disillusioned with the goals of this education, some of you are still wondering why you should care as we each have our own problems or because you haven’t recovered from not doing as well as you wanted in Dr. Bloom’s Accounting class. But, if you haven’t realized yet, as trite as this may sound, we are all in this together. We really are. The current economic crisis that started with the housing market is evidence that a few people’s actions can influence the fate of many. Therefore, it is important for us to take up leadership and service roles in our societies because making the right decisions will ensure collective progress and also secure individual prosperity.

After all our hopes and dreams have come and gone,
And our children sift through all we’ve left behind,
May the clues that they discover
And the mem’ries they uncover
Become the light that leads them to the road we each must find.

As we leave with memories of that Murphy snowball fight, wearing our North Face jackets and backpacks, heading into the world in those Ugg boots, tennis shoes, sandals or flip flops we dared in winter months, I hope we hold dear to us that which will never fade away–that desire to lead so that others may live.

Classmates, I encourage you to stay enlightened and empowered in the ways that John Carroll University has formed you these past few years. May those coming after us find us faithful. As some of you have started to inspire children as teachers, in a few years, many of you will save lives through the practice of medicine. I know that some amongst us will create brighter futures through science and engineering and many will defend the rights of those often forgotten in the courts of law. Some will also go into arts and into music to entertain the world, and for those of you who do, you had better sing much better than I did today.

Thank you.

Instead, today I will talk about two people whose lives were altered by the institution from which we are graduating. One was an award winning journalist from a working class family in a working class town. The second person has little in common with the first, except for a degree from John Carroll and a desire to effect change as a journalist. That person is me.

I had the opportunity to intern at NBC studios two summers ago and I was invited to a taping of Tim Russert’s Meet the Press. After the taping, I sat in a circle with the twenty other interns while Mr. Russert answered our questions about the world of journalism and the power that it wields. He told us about his interview with former Vice President Cheney the day after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He told us about his meeting with the Pope and about his upcoming interviews with each presidential candidate running for office that summer.

“You have to ask the tough questions,” he said. “That is the only way you get the truth; the only way to make a difference.”

He then asked us each to go around the circle and tell him our names and where we were attending college. As my fellow interns rattled off Ivy League schools, Mr. Russert simply smiled and nodded. When it was my turn, I proudly said, “I go to John Carroll University.” Mr. Russert threw his hands in the air, then clapped them together by his heart and said “Go Blue Streaks!”

“Do you know, I am a Blue Streak?” he asked me.

After the taping, I continued to think about Mr. Russert’s statement, “I am a Blue Streak.” The word that resonated with me most was the word “am,” suggesting that, although he had graduated from JCU decades before, Mr. Russert still considered himself an active member of its community. He still considered himself a Blue Streak.

These words carried me back to the day I first entered this University as a student four years ago. I stood at the steps of the DJ Lombardo student center and scanned the green quad and the violet flowers on its periphery. I looked at the statue of St. Ignatius, bold and symbolic of the Jesuit mission, grasping a sword. And finally, I looked at the bell tower, the most recognizable feature of this University.

After taking in this scene, I felt as if I belonged; as if I had all the answers. Then I stopped and asked myself a question to which I did not have an answer: “What in the world is a Blue Streak?”

In order to answer that question, I want to share with you my experience of mentoring inner city school children, starting with this sentence: “My friend is poor because she got nothing in her house” Daisha, a third grade student who had failed the Ohio Proficiency exam in previous years and struggled to read a first grade level story book, read this sentence to me when asked to construct one using the vocabulary word “poor.”

After each session, my classmates and I would drive twenty minutes down the road from Diasha’s school to John Carroll University in University Heights. After taking this route several times, I realized the striking change in scenery. In less than twenty minutes, we traveled from rundown duplexes surrounded by grassless front yards and rickety fences to a multimillion-dollar college campus, encircled by elegant family homes and churches. After considering the noticeable differences between Daisha’s school and neighborhood and mine, I began to question why this was so.

For Daisha, whose mother worked several jobs and had no time to aide her children with homework, higher education may not be an option. For the children in University Heights, however, the choice of where to attend college exists as a difficult decision.

Why had Daisha been ignored? What allowed this ignorance to persist? These are the tough questions that have to be asked in order to get the truth and to make a difference.

At my last visit to the inner city school, I asked Daisha to create a sentence with the vocabulary word “wisdom.” After much deliberation, she wrote in her notebook: “If I study hard, I will get wisdom.”

Despite its grammatical errors, Daisha’s sentence reflects the crux of the Jesuit mission. This wisdom emphasized through our training allows us to ask the difficult questions necessary to effect change. Our Jesuit education equips us not only with the knowledge but the resources to highlight Daisha’s conditions and make people care about and invest in children like her. It challenges us to engage the world.

After my four years here, I know why Mr. Russert valued his experience at John Carroll. I see how he was able to channel his skill set, developed through this University, to tell the stories of the voiceless like Daisha, and how he has inspired me to do the same.

So let us return to the question of “What is a Blue Streak?” Does it mean being an award-winning journalist whose passion for and commitment to the truth produced some of the most effective dialogue in this country’s recent history? Does it mean being the winningest coach in the history of the NFL? Does it mean becoming the CEO of a fortune 500 company? A neurosurgeon? An Entrepreneur?

Sure, it means all this, but it means much more.

To say “I am a Blue Streak” is to say that while you sit atop your bunk-bed in your heated dorm room, looking at the snow covered Quad outside your window, you are troubled by the fact that just down the street, an old woman sits atop a heated grate.

To say, “I am a Blue Streak” is to say that while you stand on the steps of the student center, overlooking the manicured lawn and the purple flowers thriving on its border, you are concerned that five miles down the road, a child in a tattered t-shirt stands on the crumbling steps of his house, overlooking potholes in the road and police cars on the corner.

To say “I am a Blue Streak” is to say that while you wait in a doctor’s office with your insurance card in hand, you find it problematic that the person next to you has skipped meals to pay to see the same doctor.

To say “I am a Blue Streak” is to say that while you plant flowers outside a deteriorating elementary school, place books on the shelf in its library and play hoops with its students on a crumbling basketball court, you know you are only making a dent in solving problems of social injustice, but you sign up to do it every year because you believe a few dents will eventually make a hole.

It is traveling to New Orleans, or Louisville, or Chicago, or Guatemala, or Nicaragua on your spring break to recognize that poverty and injustice penetrate every community.

It is being the catalyst for social change and identifying situations that need to be examined further with a more critical lens.

It is to know all the opportunities you have earned and have been given and to share them with others.

To be a Blue Streak means that when you meet another person from John Carroll University, you can clap your hands, close to your heart, and say, “I AM a Blue Streak.” And that person will know, immediately, who you are.

“This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don’t have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down.” Those words are not my own. I’ve been reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Eat, Pray, Love, and I recently stumbled across this little insight, and I thought so that’s why we have a graduation ceremony. We could easily pack up and move out the day we finish our last final exam and receive our diploma in the mail. But today is important. Today is significant. It is the one day that we can really sit down and reflect on the past few years of our life—I mean, really, we will all be sitting here for a few hours so we might as well spend it doing something productive, right?

So we thought about the happy and the sad, but then we exhaled that last breath of air from the past. And now it’s time to let it all go. We savored our memories for all that they are worth and now it’s time to pack them up and take them with us…now, that’s not to say that we forget everything that we’ve learned and experienced. But it’s time to take the next step in our journey, to make that first stroke on our new blank canvas and look forward to the continued mural of our lives which we will assemble.

So….now what? What do we do with this world in front of us? Whether we have plans or not, I think it’s difficult to imagine exactly where we will be a year from today: It’s scary. But we have to start somewhere: this is where those packed up memories and bits of knowledge you’ve acquired come into play. Ok, now I’m not trying to give you a lesson in morality, none of us are perfect, I’m not pretending I’m anywhere near close. But there are a few things I’ve picked up along the way that I think are worth sharing today.

First, and foremost, you’ve probably heard this before, but it’s all in the little things and it’s true. You’ve also probably heard the phrase: “keep track of your pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves” (that’s for one of my very financially-minded friends.) We say it in many different ways, but it’s always important to remember. It’s smiling when you pass someone on the sidewalk, taking a minute to think about others before yourself. It’s about holding the door for a stranger—unless it’s the door of a residence hall, and in that case you are compromising the security of the building. But seriously, take that extra second to pass along that bit of kindness that could really change someone’s day. I know it always means a lot to me.

Second—now we’re going a little broader in scale—“Be the change you want to see in the world”. Yeah, that kind of sounds like a big jump from the little things. But I think it’s just as important. “Be the change you want to see in the world.” I mean, you can’t go wrong with Ghandi. We can talk and talk and talk about everything that’s wrong in the world, or the way that things should be. But it takes action, and it takes you. BE that woman or man for others that we have been hearing about for four years. And many of you already are! Take a minute and look around you and appreciate all of these wonderful people. But we all must remember that we have a responsibility to be the change we want to see in the world. It’s about the words we use and they way we treat people on a daily basis. This responsibility might seem a little scary at first, and maybe that’s why it’s so easy to say why bother. But this is where we make the greatest mistake of all: by not acting, by not doing anything about it. The power to make this world a better place lies in our hands now as it did yesterday and will tomorrow. Ok, if none of that made sense, tonight, listen to the song “World” by Five for Fighting. History starts now.

This is a little bit of a follow up to the first two, so we’ll call it: point number two and a half, when it gets tough, and it will—keep going! Now, I don’t think these grand ideas about changing the world will be easy—even if we just take the “little things” route, it’s tough to wake up every day and expect to have a positive attitude. So this is when I share my favorite new quotation which was passed along to me at the bottom of a friend’s e-mail: “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.” In other words, sometimes we need to take time and re-motivate ourselves whether it’s a serious time to contemplate what moves you in life or with a nap when you really need it.

Third, and finally, and this has to do with the previous two and a half points, in fact it has to do with everything: LOVE. Whatever you do, do it with love. Love for life. Love for yourself. Love, love, love. Take that blank canvas and paint it with pure love for humanity!

So, back to that song I mentioned earlier: it really does pose a great question. Yes, time to think again: take advantage of this whole sitting thing! “What kind of world do you want? Think anything. Let’s start at the start, build a master piece. Be careful what you wish for; History starts now. Start now.”Ok, now if you’re thinking you didn’t take full advantage of our little reflection time, here’s your last chance. Make it good and don’t forget anything! Breath in…Breathe out. Ok, are you ready? Well, hell, I’m not—but here we go!

My friends know that none of those feats are particularly impressive, even for an 80-year-old. The point I’m trying to make is, I was lucky enough to be privy to one of John Carroll’s best-kept secrets. Over my four years at JCU, I had the pleasure of knowing Dr. Walter Nosal.

I did not go looking for him. It was a couple weeks into my freshman year and I was in our old and now defunct science center, Bohannon. I was on assignment for my second ever story for The Carroll News and my editor wanted me to find out what’s going on in this now unused building. Visions of Watergate danced in my 18-year-old head as I explored this place. I was opening doors in hopes that I would find some corruption or anything that involved money laundering.

Unfortunately for my story, nothing of that sort was going on. In fact, nothing really at all was going on in there. And, just before I left, I took a walk down the only corner of the building I had not explored. I knocked on a door, and a voice inside told me to come in.

That was the first time I met Dr. Nosal.

When I opened his door, I grew a little concerned. I thought this guy had confused me for his grandson or something because I don’t think anyone in my entire life had ever been so outwardly happy to see me. This short, silver-haired guy with big blue eyes was standing in his office with a huge grin on his face and a hand shake firm enough to make me wince.

Dr. Nosal told me to take a seat at the fold-out table in the middle of his office, and the questions began. But the questions didn’t come from me, the reporter who knocked on his door to ask him about what he was doing in Bohannon. Instead, the questions came from him: name, major, what I do on campus, what I want to do when I graduate.

At the time, I thought Dr. Nosal was incredibly unhelpful. He let me get out maybe one question, and the only quote I got out of him was about how grateful he was to have an office in Bohannon – an office that reminded me of a prison cell without the bars.

That day, I thought I left Bohannon with nothing. No quotes. No facts. Only an impeding deadline that was less than a day away. I thought I had just met a nice old man, but I really wasn’t interested in having the “what are you gonna do with your life” talk. After all, I was just a freshman. I had plenty of time to figure it all out.

But before I left, I gave Dr. Nosal my number. And, unlike many of the females in the the Class of 2009, he actually called me.

Though he is known by few students, it turns out Dr. Nosal is kind of a big deal at JCU. His face is on the “100 years of Carroll” poster. He spent 60 years at the University, 39 of which as a professor and eventual chair of the Departments of Education and Counseling and Testing Services, the rest he spent as an “assistant without portfolio.” Once I offered to buy him a portfolio, but he told me that wasn’t what that means.

As I learned more about him and he about me, we formed a “Tuesdays with Maurie”-like relationship, except with a bit of an edge. After one summer I went into his office and he told me I had gotten a little big, said I looked like a line backer. After that visit I went running.

And while Dr. Nosal believes in the benefits of physical activity, he spent his life devoted to the activity of the mind. A fulfilling life requires what he calls the Olympics of the mind, the body and the heart.

He called me a tiny acorn, he chastised me for putting my hand in front of my mouth when I spoke, for mumbling and slouching. But he never ceased to remind me that tall oaks grow from small acorns.

I grew a lot in my four years here. Not physically, of course – I’m actually still quite short. But I think I am a lot different today than I was four years ago, and I think that’s a good thing.

Dr. Nosal observed this growth, and much of it was through the weekly editions of The Carroll News I tried to remember to slide under his door. Unfortunately I often got busy and forgot to make the delivery, despite my best intentions. When I explained this to Dr. Nosal, he reminded me that the road to hell is paved with good intentions

My time with The Carroll News shaped my college experience. I was editor of the paper my senior year, and for three years I was a columnist who subscribed to Dr. Nosal’s aphorism “Every pearl comes from an irritated oyster.”

My column, titled “You’re Wrong, I’m Rafferty,” taught me a lot. The first lesson I learned was that not everyone thought I was funny. One student wrote a letter to the editor that said, “Perhaps no one takes the time to notice, but his weekly column is wrong.”

I certainly had some critics. But that never stopped me, and because of it I think I produced a couple pearls.

In some respects we should all be irritated oysters. One day I saw a member of JCU’s cleaning staff picking off the ground a crumbled up copy of The Plain Dealer. The front-page story that day was about how AIG paid $165 million in bonuses to top executives after receiving public funds through a $173 billion bailout. A month earlier 10 members of JCU’s cleaning staff had been laid off.

Certainly we should not go through our lives as angry people, but we should graduate knowing that we are in a tremendous position to lead great lives and to help others improve their quality of life.

Every time I visited Dr. Nosal, he asked me the same questions: Whose career I would like to be predecessor to. What are my dreams? Even though I knew they were coming, I still got frustrated every time he asked me because I never had a real answer.

Most of us don’t have answers ready for those types of questions. If WE could do anything, be anything, what would WE be?

These are questions most of us don’t feel compelled to answer. A lot of us are concerned with getting a job, not our dream job.

It is fair to be worried. Things are going to get more difficult from here on out.

But, in the words of Dr. Nosal, all sunshine makes a desert.

While these times might breed anxiety, they also can free us from the pressure of jumping into an entry-level job that is off track from our dreams.

Tough times can also make us think about things a little differently. It can make us explore options we previously did not think were worth exploring. I never seriously entertained the thought of service until the past few months. The more I looked into it, the more it seemed like something I would enjoy doing. I most likely would have never given the thought of service a fair shake if I had more lucrative options.

I met Dr. Nosal in the last place on campus I expected to find a person like him. It’s funny how life works like that.

Today, we’re all going to get a college degree from a great university. We’re going to be OK. Our parents, teachers and fellow graduates are all rooting for us. Dr. Nosal assured me that even after he was 6 feet underground he would still be rooting for me. There are people in your lives who are just as enthusiastically cheering for you.

The goals we set are achievable no matter how high or low the market is. We just need to understand those goals so that we can achieve what we all should be aiming for – living a life that matters.

Thank you.