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2011 ESB Valedictory Address
Dean Taras, members of the Saskatoon business community, parents, relatives, and students – thank you. It’s an honour to be named Valedictorian of the 2011 Edwards School of Business graduating class. In all honesty, I was gunning for the sports award, but apparently these Herculean triceps and thuder-clap thighs weren’t enough. Not even a nomination. This disappointing blow led to a personal realization, and so tonight I announce my pre-emptive retirement from competitive body building. I will be sticking to business.
It’s equal parts fun and rewarding to see everyone come together tonight, not to mention that you all look like you belong on a red carpet somewhere. You’re beautiful, handsome - all that jazz. I myself wanted to arrive inside of an egg, but Lady Gaga stole my idea at the Grammys. Anyways, like I was saying, it’s wonderful to come together to celebrate our years of academic achievements. For some, these achievements include publishing honours research, attaining great distinction, and/or placing first in national business competitions, while for others it includes finally passing Managerial Accounting with a 51. Remember, reachable goals: the first step to success.
Some of the students here, myself included, represent Edwards' first full graduating class in the sense that the College of Commerce became ESB four years ago. Others have been here much longer and quite frankly just want to get out. In either case, this is a day where professionals, professors, and parents can chuck their metaphorical batons at a new generation who, ready or not, have to grab hold to lead the future. To the professionals specifically: thank you for your support, time, and guidance beyond our classroom settings. To the professors: thank you for your ongoing commitment, considerable patience, and attempts at humour. To the parents who always knew their children could persevere and get through their degree, congratulations, you should be proud. And to the parents who had their doubts: I’ve been in groups with many of your children, and I’m as surprised to see some of them graduating as you are. Finally, to my fellow students: in a sense we've grown up together. We've run side-by-side to catch buses in blizzards, helped each other pass web-tests, and slept in the reading room on those mysterious chair stains more times than is humanly healthy. In fact, we've spent so much time together in groups that I think I qualify for common-law marriage with at least twenty of you in this room. We may not all be best friends or even acquaintances, but, as a whole, we've made some pretty good memories. Well, let's be honest - we've lost some memories and made some mistakes, too, but that was mostly at the Branch and LB5Q.
When trying to hunt for some inspiring, perspicuous message to talk about tonight, I admit that I had trouble finding the right launch pad. So I thought “why not go back to the very beginning?”. Why did I choose to take business? Why did any of us choose Edwards? Introspectively interviewing my younger self was an interesting exercise. For example, in elementary school I wanted to be a zamboni driver. Later on, my aspirations changed to pastry chef, then to talk-show host, to antique appraiser, to accountant – all sorts of ridiculous things. My life changing moment, however, can be pinpointed with razor exactness. March 2004. I started watching The Apprentice on NBC and Donald Trump had me mesmerized. It wasn't even something he said. It was one particular camera shot - and I can remember it so clearly - where The Donald is walking with his two viceroys (Carolyn Kepcher and George Ross) through Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City.
Boom. I needed to be this billionaire.
I didn't even know what Trump did, but I wanted his lifestyle so bad that from that moment on, I knew I had to enrol in business. You think I'm joking – I'm not. And who knows, maybe I’d have been a billionaire by now if I didn’t have to spend so much on U of S parking tickets every week. Seriously. Anyhow, eight years after my Donald Trump epiphany my goals and game-plan have changed slightly, but the underlying inspiration is still there: to be able to dream big and live my passion. And that's what I truly believe an Edwards degree allows us to do; I've witnessed bits of it in my life already, and so those experiences and that theme are what I want to talk about tonight.
Last summer, I had the amazing opportunity to live and work in Manhattan, New York City. I lived two blocks away from the Empire State Building, I worked in Madison Square Garden's 50 storey office building, and at one point I got to have lunch with Terry McGraw, chairman of the United States' Business Roundtable from 2003 – 2006, on the top floor of a sixth avenue skyscraper that overlooked all of New York and Lady Liberty on the Hudson. I paint this picture not to make anyone jealous, although it certainly gets my current self green with envy, but to illustrate where a small town Saskatchewan prairie boy was hanging around at age 20. I loved that summer because it broke the stereotypes I myself had set of Saskatchewan opportunity. And I ended up learning two things over those four months: one, that our careers’ trajectories are limited only by the amount of work that we put into them. Before finding the job that I ended up with, I had sent out 114 different cover letters and gotten four calls back. Competition is vicious but perseverance prevails. The second thing that I learned was that the value of an Edwards education is equivocal to the best business educations out there. The friends I made -- from Phoenix to Chicago to Long Island -- were all learning the same things that I was, down to the same textbooks. So, truly, what we get out of this entire educational experience equals what we put in.
What I'm getting at, and maybe I'm skirting around what I actually want to say, is that I encourage my fellow graduates to use your good education from Edwards to pursue something that you love doing, because the education itself will never limit you. Saskatchewan is exploding with opportunities right now – we've heard it a thousand times – and if you see your place here, then I strongly endorse the decision to stay and to make this your home, and encourage you to continue to build our provincial reputation for the rest of your careers. BUT that's not the only way to build provincial reputation. If by now you still have a gut feeling that there’s something else out there beyond area code 306, I encourage you to go exploring and find something that actually excites you. It's scary, I know – I've done it to some degree. But risk and failure, as the finance majors will tell us, is better had when we're young and daring. So please, go ahead and do what makes you happy.
Now don’t worry, I’ve got plenty more clichés where that came from. In fact, if you’re like my family and you’re currently playing the drinking game: “Drink when the speaker says a grad cliché”, here are a few more for you. Ready?
“Follow your dreams”, “We are the future”, and “This isn’t the end, it's just the beginning”. You’re welcome, grandpa.
Alright, everyone – now’s the time when we have to take a break from this regularly scheduled speech to hear a few words from our sponsors. Please stay tuned after these messages.
Business students: late night studying and midterms making you dizzy? All that cheap fast-food crap churning your stomach? No need to worry – get Pepto-Bismol! [Slam a bottle of Pepto-Bismol on the podium] It's great, great, great for Porter’s Other Five Forces: nausea, heartburn, indigestion, upset stomach, diarrhea. Relief is only $9.99 away, act now before it’s too late.
You should have guessed: put a marketing student up here and he’s going to start selling crap. This is captive audience marketing at its finest, folks. I would not pass up the opportunity. And Pepto-Bismol, I’ll be waiting by my mailbox for my spokesperson check.
Honestly, I wonder how often marketing students get to give the valedictory address? Probably not often because, as it’s quickly becoming clear, we’ve got about two minutes of real stuff to say interspersed among eighteen minutes of jokes and products to sell. Guess I do belong in advertising.
It’s difficult to develop blanket advice that applies to all students, though. With so many different interests and majors, what’s valuable to one group may be quixotic or irrelevant to another. And so I want to take a minute just to address all the different majors separately and sincerely, if I could.
First, to all the accounting majors. You made a sturdy career choice, one that will unassailably bring you financial stability and a strong career path. Indeed, if birth, death, and taxes are the three certain forces of this universe, you've picked a steadfast occupation. My only question is why stop with taxes? Why not go for a hat-trick or triple-whammy? Start a sperm bank that offers coffins as a sign-up incentive and you'll have all three stages of life covered. Think about it, accountants.
To all the finance majors: I am truly, deeply terrified that some of you could be managing my money one day. I don't know a lot about RRSPs, RRIFs or TFSAs, but I do know that a pub crawl to the Pat, the Scuz, and Jax does not count as “diversifying risk”. Or maybe, depending on if you'd rather get punched or stabbed, it does. But anyway, finance majors, my advice to you is an investment tip. Seeing as many of you will probably ride the emotional roller-coasters of the stock markets for the rest of your careers, you'll most likely be the first of us to go grey. Hence, invest in hair dye now for a financially sound future.
To all the human resource majors: most of you probably chose HR because you're “people persons”. You're good listeners, you're trustworthy. Usually I find you're too nice, though. Take employee evaluations, for example. You always try to come up with points for improvement or mutually beneficial solutions. If I were to conduct reviews and come across someone with substandard performance, I would probably write something like “Jack has delusions of adequacy” or “Jill should return to her previous job as village idiot”. You, HR majors, have a level of patience I can only dream of. My only advice is to slack a little. Stir the pot. Spread some mean rumours. If you solve all an organization's people problems and everyone's happy, no one will need you. So go ahead - slap some bums, stoke some fires.
To all the management majors: you probably came into university with absolutely no clue what you wanted to do, and are now leaving just as clueless. Parents, students, that's not a bad thing. Perhaps there are entrepreneurs among you. The next strategic consultants, or sales reps, or Wal-Mart cashiers. To the University, a management major is like the toy inside a Kinder Surprise wrapped with chocolate tuition. They never know what the toy's going to be, but if it's amazing, great -- if not, hey, at least they got their chocolate. My advice to the management majors, especially when looking for jobs in the next few months, is to listen to the wise words of the great philosopher Mick Jagger when he said: “You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need.”
To all the biotechnology students: my regrets that your major is as extinct as the pterodactyl, triceratops, and procompsognathus. I'm sorry, but I don't have any advice for you.
To my fellow marketing majors: we are few but mighty. We've spent the last couple years learning how to target and position and sell the right value propositions to the right consumers, but now – on the precipice of the real world – we have to figure out how to turn all that into a career. That's what I love about this major. There is absolutely no limit to it; every company, every not-for-profit, every entrepreneur needs to sell something, and we're the heart behind that. We can build our own dream jobs, but first it requires each of us building our own brand. And that applies broadly to all the majors. We have to learn to sell more than products now, we have to sell ourselves. Figuratively, of course. Although I hear there's some good money to be made on 22nd. Anyways...
As all of us – the students - cross the TCU stage in June, cameras blinding our eyes and robes trying to trip our feet, we’ll all exit the other end of that stage with the same degree in hand. Bachelor of Commerce from the Edwards School of Business at the University of Saskatchewan. We’ll finally have a tangible piece of evidence that says we accomplished something significant, and that’s something that will always be behind us as a reminder of what we can achieve. A degree isn’t just a job warrant, it’s reward and reassurance. With it we should feel secure in our ability to tackle more and navigate life’s vicissitudes.
But that degree – the piece of paper itself – is not the important part. It’s a symbol of accomplishment of something that we started years ago. And now tonight, in front of everyone here, I would like to share my own personal symbol of accomplishment. As I explained before, I went into business for a pretty strange reason, following in the footsteps of pretty big shoes. But now, being one step closer to success, I finally feel proud, privileged, and worthy to don my own Donald Trump hair-doo.
[Put on a Donald Trump wig]
I feel inspired again. And to share this feeling, here are a few Donald Trump quotes for all the graduates who haven’t fallen asleep yet:
1. When somebody challenges you, fight back. Be brutal, be tough.
2. Sometimes your best investments are the ones you don't make.
3. As long as you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big.
I’d like to take a minute just to reiterate a few more thank-yous. First, to the Edwards Business Students' Society, especially Max and Ashlee, for organizing this event. Second, to the school and specifically our new Dean, Daphne Taras. Daphne’s said at the end of her speeches before that she’s so proud of the students here she wishes we were her own kids. Well, in turn, I’d like to say that we’ve been just as proud and lucky to have you as our surrogate mom this year. Third, thank you to the families for the support you’ve given us all these years, specifically to my own mom and dad and both grandmas and grandpas. I’m as thankful as you are proud. And finally, to all the students. Please, add me on Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and all that good stuff. I’m eager to follow everyone’s careers.
Beyond that, there’s only one thing left to say. Go out, graduates, and continue to build our provincial reputation. You’re prepared, you’re primed, you’re polished and, take it from Trump, “you’re hired".
Thank you very much.
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