Kyle Bloedow, of Little Chute, offered the following remarks at the 2014 Midyear Commencement Ceremony on Dec. 13. Bloedow is graduating with a degree in communication studies.
“Welcome, friends, family, faculty and staff, and of course graduating class of 2014. I have a few words for all of you here today and they are WE DID IT! We finally made it to our destination of graduation. Today we have finished our college experience, we have achieved our goal of obtaining our degrees, and we did this through believing in ourselves and others believing in us as well. I’d like to start out today by telling you all a story and it goes something like this.
“My name is Kyle Bloedow and I am from Little Chute, Wisconsin. I am a first generation college student, as many of you sitting among all of us today may be as well. I have never been a standout student, achieving average grades at best even when I put in the work. My ACT score when I took that, well lets just say thats not exactly a talking point of mine in conversation about why I choose to go to college. My school advisers in high school often times would mention, “well have you ever thought about going to a tech school for a practical career or do you really think you have the ability to do well at a four year university?” Often times hinting at why I wouldn’t be a good college student or make it through school. However, there is one thing that all of us sitting here today can say and that is we achieved our goal, we gained our degree and that is something we will always have.
“Now, achievement can mean many different things to people. For instance, in the Merriam-Webster dictionary achievement is defined as “something that has been done or achieved through effort, as well as a result of hard work.” Some of us, this is how we measure achievement. Some of us will have measured this based on our ability in our academics. Some of us will base it off of the clubs and organization we were a part of in our time here. Now for some of you in the audience thinking of your achievements you have made in your time here a few that came to mind for me. They are the pronunciation of that building across from Dempsey as Clow and not cloow, you know a freshman when you see one when you hear this. Or others of us an achievement being able to finally say we know how to read our STAR reports. Or at least found someone who knows how to read those crazy things for us. Some of you may have ran for student government and others leadership roles within your clubs and organizations. Or maybe even if you’re like me one of your biggest achievements was just selecting your major, once, twice, three or well maybe even four or five times before we found our home in each of our departments.
“These are just a couple of the items in which we have been apart of here over the years, they have shaped who we are. These events have created and challenged our beliefs, that we may not have had. With these achievements, we form our legacy, the part of us that we leave behind for others, to discover and to share. I want to challenge everyone here today to ask yourselves what legacy have you created, whether here at this university or just in life have you left it, or is it still a work in progress? The answer could be both, because our legacy will always grow by the actions we have taken in the past and the ones that we will make in the future.
“The future is in our sights, my friends; we have reached the final stepping stone of our undergraduate path here at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, and have many paths in front of us to place that next stone. So after today, don’t be afraid to take chances, throw that stone in a direction you’ve never gone before, experience the world and challenge the things you might not believe in, as well as challenge yourselves to be mindful and critical of your own beliefs. Depending on the degrees we have earned, its easy to say that, it’s situational, for us all and that we will all have different paths to follow.
“Well as I stand here before you all today before the December graduating class of 2014. I can once again say Hello, My name is Kyle Bloedow a first generation college student who is graduating from this University with a degree in Communication Studies I am an outstanding academic performer, and by that I mean someone who has learned to be curious, hard working, and caring about others. If you think about it, what has happened here over the last four years is that I have developed what Aristotle calls Ethos: intelligence, good character, and goodwill toward others. As a person, this was something that I was told I may never be able to achieve, and something that even I had believed for a while when times were hard. But, here I stand looking into the future about to jump off of these stepping stones we have laid in college and begin writing the next chapter of my life story as we all will do the same. This is the legacy I leave–my determination to never give up, my outstanding academic performance, my curiosity about the world that surrounds us, my sense of hard work to better understand this world, and the goodwill that I have for others. Congratulations to all of the graduates here today, the next chapter starts today so get ready to pick up the pen of life and write your story.”