This past weekend, hundreds of Spartans graduated from Michigan State University as part of the Class of 2019. I was able to not only witness the College of Arts & Letters ceremony first-hand, but take part in the festivities as well. For the last five years, I have been a member of the CAL Alumni Board of Directors. As president this past year, I was given the opportunity to address the graduating CAL students on behalf of the alumni of the college.
My husband Zack was also a member of the CAL board, serving for six years before I, as I liked to joke, continued the Pohl dynasty on the board. Being a member of the CAL board gave me the opportunity to meet and become friends with several other alumni, as well as reconnect with MSU and the great things going on in our college.
While the college will be moving forward with a different way of engaging alumni and forgoing its traditional board, I was honored to be asked to speak at CAL’s commencement as a sort of last act as president.
I had several ideas of what I wanted to say and do during my speech, but in sitting down to actually write down my thoughts, I realized how challenging these things can be.
The last time I wrote a speech, it was when I was the matron of honor at my cousin Olivia’s wedding in 2014. It took a lot of time and thought, but I was able to inject heart, humor, and brevity into my speech. I wanted to have a similar feeling to my commencement remarks.
During the CAL commencement ceremony, the president of the board typically speaks after the diplomas are given out and the Dean of the college makes remarks. That means it’s at the tail end, and along with getting to feel nervous on stage for the entire ceremony, I also had to speak when everyone is antsy and ready to get out of there.
The organizer for the ceremony needed my remarks over a week ahead of time, in order to include the text with the master script and provide it to a closed captioner. We were leaving for Florida the next day, so along with packing and preparing for the trip, I needed to make final decisions about my speech. No pressure or anything!
My speech was going in a few different directions. I started with writing way too much about my personal connections to MSU, something that my husband helped me scale back in the editing process. I knew I wanted some sort of group participation element, with asking students to shout the name of someone who helped them in their time at MSU. I wanted to use the metaphor of a train, how there are stops in life and people get on the train or get off of it, and who are the people these graduates will carry with them to the next stop. But the metaphor felt like a cliche, and I wasn’t able to cover all of the points of it succinctly.
Then, thankfully, my friends in the MSU CABS department unveiled their most recent project: asking students to say what one word defined them as Spartans. The call for answers was on social media, and one day their office painted The Rock at MSU with a definition of “Spartan.” The project at The Rock also invited students to write the one word that defines them as Spartans.
This prompt helped me shape my speech. After much thinking, I realized that my word was “thankful.” That feeling of gratitude as a Spartan helped carry into the group participation element I wanted to include in my speech, and shaped everything. I also had the helpful eyes of Zack and my friend Kate, a former CAL board president and alumna who was in my exact position a year prior, to help me get it just right.
In working on the speech, I realized that while most people at the ceremony wouldn’t know me at all, I had met so many members of the CAL staff, faculty, and student body in my time on the board. I wasn’t just a stranger talking to them about general ideas. I could make it more personal, and show that I know about the college and about them. I also felt that it was important to acknowledge what a difficult couple of years it has been for MSU, without dwelling on or overlooking the challenges either.
While I was very nervous leading up to graduation day, I felt that I had practiced enough to feel confident. Sparty also gave me a pep talk that morning:
My husband Zack came to the ceremony to help cheer me on and record my speech. His dad/my father in law Scott works for WKAR at MSU and reads students’ names at commencement ceremonies, and luckily he was also there to participate. I was glad to have a familiar face in the holding area and on the stage with me.
Funnily enough, the scariest part of the ceremony wasn’t my speech, but was when I was handing out the diplomas with Dean Long. We devised a system where I would hand him the diploma into his left hand with my left, relay style. What I hadn’t anticipated was the speed of the students, and needing to carefully pass the diplomas with my left hand while also shaking hands with the graduates with my right hand. Fortunately, CAL is relatively small compared to other colleges, so the process didn’t take very long. I did love the chance to be up close with the graduates and shake each of their hands at such an exciting moment.
When it was time to speak, I tried to remember all of the pointers Zack taught me about pace, volume, and when to look down at my speech if I needed help remembering my next sentence. When I first walked up to the podium and place my hands on it, there was a loud mic boom sound. Yikes. “Hot mic!” I said. I realized I needed to be careful with my hands and relax as much as I could. Looking back at the video, I realize that I made the same mistake Zack said many people make, which was finishing my sentences looking down instead of looking up. I can only attribute it to my nerves and clutching to my speech text like a life raft.
Ultimately, I was very happy with how everything went. My biggest worry (that students wouldn’t yell out a name during my group participation prompt) ended up not being a problem. Thankfully, they spoke up loudly and proudly in that moment. It gave me the confidence to push through to the end.
After my final line, I was thankful to receive very warm applause and cheers. I felt very happy in that moment, and relieved.
As I said in the beginning of my speech, I never thought I’d have the chance to speak at a graduation ceremony in my life. It was truly an honor and probably one of the only times I’ll ever have a captive audience like that. I hope I did the moment justice.
Watch the full commencement ceremony below. My speech begins just after the one-hour mark: