A message to fellow Poole graduates – Carry your Own Skis
Following is the Poole College of Management Student Commencement Address for spring 2015, presented by Devan Ferrell Riley at the start of the NC State Poole College of Management commencement ceremony on May 9, 2015, at the PNC Arena in Raleigh, N.C. Riley graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in accounting and a concentration in financial analysis. Read more about the speaker.
Commencement Address
Good afternoon everyone, and on behalf of the class, welcome again to the PNC Arena for our Poole College of Management Commencement Ceremony. You know, the only people here today that are more important than the graduates are you all, the families, and the faculty, staff, and administration that are here with us on the stage. I talk later in my address about a support system, and each of you make up that support system, and I speak for all us graduates when I say thank you for your years of unwavering support.
I am honored to have been selected to deliver the commencement address today, as I can think of no better way to represent my fellow classmates. NC State University, and especially the Poole College of Management means more to me than I can find words for, and I know I speak for the entire class when I say that we are forever indebted (no student loan pun intended) to Poole’s excellent academic programming that will help us all be successful in the real world.
As students, we have all benefited from our support system helping us along the way. From late night study sessions with our friends surprising us with coffee, to spending more hours in a professor’s office the last week of the semester than we did the entire first half, it is undeniable that we can count on one another for help in the tough times. But as we move forward from college, I encourage us all to look for ways to take responsibility for our own selves, so that we may better serve the needs of others.
I read an essay a few years back, Lian Dolan’s “Carry Your Own Skis,” and it has stuck with me my entire college career, and now, as I stand on the starting line of life after undergrad, it rings out again in my mind. The summary was that a kid and his 17 cousins and siblings all wanted to ski with their mother and aunt, but the one rule was: carry your own skis. Each of the many children was responsible for getting their equipment to and from the lodge and car each day, and being on time in doing so. If they could not complete this task, they were not allowed to ski, and were in consequence were forced to sit in the lodge all day. But there was simply more to it than that. Skiing was a basic part of life and not skiing meant not participating in this families main activity. To an 11-year-old child, not skiing essentially meant not being a part of the family at all. Dolan says, “Sitting in the lodge all day just wasn't an option, once we reached ski age. We were expected to participate. We learned to carry our own skis.”
Fellow members of the class of 2015, we are about to start a new chapter of adult life unlike anything we’ve known so far, and we are expected to participate. We have been prepared by our parents, we have been taught by our professors, and we have been blessed by our time together in Raleigh, and now it is time for us to grab our skis and take them to the slopes. Dolan further says that his childhood ski lessons have applied to his whole life. His lifelong attitude has been, “To the lodge and back, baby.” Well, To the lodge and back class of 2015. Whatever your lodge may be, a big four accounting firm, a multinational corporation, an international banking giant, or your very own tech startup in the basement, go to that lodge with your own skis and go in such a way that demands success because you and only you are responsible for getting yourself where you want to go.
But alas, there will be tough times. There will be times when we simply cannot fathom the next step. For many of us, this may come at the onset of our first mortgage payment. For some, it may be years from now when after a long stint with your first employer you are not in fact promoted but instead fired. It is in these times when it will be hard to carry our own skis. “My bank gave me this interest rate” or “My boss fired me” we will protest. But in these times of question, I encourage us to step back and think about the decisions we’ve made to get us where we are today, and then, simply grab our skis and press on to the next lodge. How you respond and grow from these hardships will be up to us, but I can assure you that our brief moments of failure today are merely the stairsteps to lasting success tomorrow. And so, I’d like to end by offering you some inspiring words from Robert Frost and his poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Eve.” This poem has comforted me in the most uncertain of times, and it has motivated me in the darkest times. Frost ends the poem saying:
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Ladies and gentlemen, our promises to keep are not necessarily to our parents or our professors. They are not necessarily to our future employers or future significant others. Our promises are to ourselves. If you haven’t already done so, promise yourself RIGHT NOW that you are going to be a successful graduate of the Poole College of Management, and when you walk out of that door today, keep that promise in everything you do because life, is not a dress rehearsal, we are all in both our debut acts and our encore performance, and how we choose to bow at the end is up to us. I wish you all the best of luck in all your life’s endeavors, and again, thank you to all who have helped us get here today. Godspeed and Go Wolfpack.
About the speaker
Devan Riley calls Chinquapin and Beulaville, N.C., home. He graduated summa cum laude, with a bachelor of science degree in accounting and a financial analysis concentration. He was on the Poole College of Management Dean’s List every semester, and was inducted into the Beta Gamma Sigma International Business Honor Society. While at NC State University, Riley participated in Acappology, NC State’s premier co-ed a cappella ensemble, was the general director for the Triangle Youth Leadership Services and was elected the first Student Body vice president at NC State University. In addition to his leadership experience, Riley held two internships, one at Murphy-Brown, LLC and a second at a local CPA firm. In the summer of 2012 he studied abroad at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. Immediately after graduation, he will be completing an additional internship with Dixon Hughes Goodman, LLP in Charleston, S.C., before returning to NC State University to entering Poole College's Jenkins Master of Accounting program in fall 2015.
