“A Loyola graduate is academically excellent.” Jamie-Lee Schombs, Academic Convocation, February 2014
When Mr. Lyness extended me an invitation to give this speech at Academic Convocation, I was quite glad that it was not in person. I sat in the library, stunned, his words affirming my conclusions that Loyola is indeed a community that challenges every member to seek the magis, to become “more.” I had sometimes thought idly about which grad at grad characteristic I would prefer to speak about, and I am proud to speak to you about what it means to live academically excellent. You may think that being academically excellent is earning straight A’s and filling your résumé with extracurriculars to get into your top college. But what is excellence, exactly, and what does it mean to be academically excellent? In addition to earning high grades in school subjects, academic excellence means developing all of the talents that God has graced you with. For me, excellence includes maintaining a high level of physical fitness and competing in races to keep me motivated. In eighth grade, I joined the Track & Field team after a disastrous attempt at playing Softball. I just COULD NOT catch the ball in the mitt. That first season, I was elevated to the varsity Track team for my throwing abilities. I was strong and fast from years of playing soccer and basketball, and thought I had found my niche in throwing heavy metal objects. I took first place in the shot put at championships that season. But as I grew older, I realized I needed to change. Sophomore year I was up to 150 lbs and my track season was rather less than excellent. Starting that summer, I began running recreationally. I would run between one and three miles at a clip a couple times a week, which took a lot of motivation for me. I was used to a certain level of effort—I was a solid A- student without serious exertion—and focusing on excellence in athletics required diligence, pain and sacrifice. By the next Track season I was
down 20 lbs and taking on new events: Pole vault, 100m hurdles, high jump, and finally Pentathlon. I graduated fourth in my class, with the highest honors awarded at my senior athletic dinner: Three MVPs, Scholar Athlete, and Most Outstanding Female Athlete awards. That year, I secured my legend at Eldred with school records in the javelin and pole vault, though my little sister broke that pole vaulting record a few years later. My need to be excellent, to be better, to hone my abilities and prove the doubtful, nagging voice in my head WRONG, drove me to achieve my ambitions. There is a woman of strength and stature who I have always admired for her ambition and philosophy: Tina Fey. She built her career from the bottom-up, becoming the first female head writer for Saturday Night Live. When Tina was a student at Second City, an improv acting school in Chicago, she took a class with artistic director Martin de Maat. Some of Martin’s rules of improv are “Greet everything with ‘Yes’” and “The fun is always on the other side of a yes.” Wow. What an enlightening moment for me! (And for Tina, of course). Excellence meant saying “Yes,” even when I experienced fear at the thought of accepting an opportunity. Now, that is not to say that I’ll be saying “Yes!” if Fear Factor is ever revived again and I am dared to be a contestant, but living by the power of “Yes” is being academically excellent. The wise words of Paulo Coelho in one of my favorite books, The Alchemist (available in the library!), sums up the pursuit of excellence: “We all need to be aware of our personal calling…It is God’s blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on Earth. Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend.” We fail to live by excellence if we are not working towards our goals, our legends. After years of study and lots of sweat and tears, I finally realized my calling: To become a librarian. To inspire teens to learn,
read, and pursue their own personal legends. My faith was tested repeatedly as I overcame conflict after conflict, but the most trying was the summer after I completed my Master’s degree. Fresh out of college with nothing but internships and student teaching, I took a summer library media specialist position at Monticello Central School District with grades 7-12 to gain some real-world experience. Monticello is a high poverty public school district with a large population of students that has never been taught how to dream big. Though my time at Monticello was brief, I did my best to run a summer reading contest and integrate information literacy skills into the curriculum, always striving for excellence. The worst part of summer school was a two-hour slot in the middle of the day during which twenty-five middle school kids were assigned to the library. Twenty-five of Monticello’s most wanted. You can imagine my pain, as a newbie. I pulled out all the stops: Trivia quests on the computers; art stations with every how-to-draw library book I could find; origami patterns, word scrambles and mazes; you name it! Consequently, my infamous library riddles were born. Part of my personal legend is encouraging excellence in others. My measure of success at Monticello was discovering the many talents of those rambunctious kids, some of which hadn’t realized they had talents at all, and one specific case: Josh, a junior who had never been excited about reading and writing. Sure, he had read books before, but he became a voracious reader that summer. Josh would read any mystery, manga or graphic novel he could lay his bony hands on and, because of his fascination with art and visual storytelling, Josh was a vivid writer. He proudly wrote his first book reviews in my library and saw them published to our website. Josh had never been known for his academics, but that summer he rejoiced in his accomplishments; he was the epitome of excellence. Academic excellence is specific to each person’s unique circumstance. For me, excellence was putting all of my effort and determination into my
librarian work at Monticello. For Josh, excellence was moving beyond the classroom to discover lifelong learning through reading and writing. Let me leave you with some final thoughts and a quote to ponder. “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.” The speaker, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a great man, who lived his legend in pursuit of excellence, saying “yes” even in the face of adversity. Decide now whether you will say “Yes!” to the opportunities that will allow you achieve your own excellence.
Thank you.