What College Is All About
On Monday I spent the day at Yale as my brother-in-law Brian graduated with his MBA from the School of Management. It was an awesome day and I was both incredibly proud of him and honored at the same time just to be there in attendance as Brian and his classmates took their first steps towards the rest of their lives.
You see, graduation isn’t just about your college career coming to an end. It’s about a new beginning. It’s about potential. It’s about hope.
It’s about taking everything you learned, experienced, fought for, struggled with and even failed at and bringing it with you out into the greater world and trying your hardest to do something good with it.
And while Brian made the most of his time at Yale, it wasn’t necessarily about Yale. It was about him working harder than he ever has before; creating relationships with faculty and other students that will transform his future; travelling abroad – more than once – to gain a better understanding of how the world works and, more importantly, how it doesn’t and it was about making the necessary sacrifices (which some of us – me included – selfishly did not always understand) to ensure that he seized every opportunity available to him.
But even if he didn’t go to Yale, Brian still would have succeeded. Because no matter where he went for his MBA, Brian was going to work hard and do all the things he needed to do to succeed.
And that’s the point about going to college. No matter where you go, going out there and wringing every last drop of opportunity out of the experience so that when you graduate you can look back and say, without a doubt, that you have no regrets, is what it’s all about. You do that and you will find success and happiness in your life.
And who doesn’t want to be successful and happy?
Congratulations to my other little brother, Brian Coulombe, and every other graduate of the class of 2013! May you go out now, create your place in life and change the world for the better.
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