Empathy is defined as the mental process of identifying with the character and experiences of another person. Although the word is now used freely very few people can know you, understand your strengths and weaknesses, or could have shared your experiences close enough to really empathize with you. So, while I could write this from the perspective of understanding and knowing what you are thinking right now, we know better. So, I would rather give you a few words from one person to another person who is about to go through what the former has already survived and the latter is about to tackle.
Moving from one level to another in anything is never easy, but it is not necessarily difficult. What is difficult is what you have to do to stay “on top of the mountain” once you have arrived at the summit. I imagine many of you feel like you have arrived, and you should. By making it to Hampton University you have beaten the odds and transcended a society of can’t into a world of possibilities. However, you need to be careful because in reality you have not done much just yet. Getting here was the easy part, staying here and excelling is difficult. It takes an education for life to excel. For most of you getting here was not easy, and you refuse to allow anyone to tell you can’t enjoy it. That is fine, but I remember a proverb that says the journey of 1000 miles begins with just one step. Well, I imagine that at mile 350 when you look back it seems like you have come a long way, but if you then look forward you realize that the next step to mile 351 is as daunting and important as the first step so long ago, because 650 miles is still a massive task to accomplish.
If there is anything I can say that will help you excel at our home by the sea it is stay focused and forever hungry. Treat your first like your last and your last like your first, as one Brooklyn rapper once said. A challenge a day will keep you having to go home angry away, so strive to excel at all aspects of your life at Hampton University. Of the twelve young men I hung out with regularly freshmen year in James Hall, I was the only one to keep my scholarship. We were all on scholarship. I was the only one to apply for Honors College. Some of the people that started with me, where you are now, are not with me today because they keep looking back instead of forward. I hope your dreams don’t allow you to make the same mistake. I look forward to working with all of you in the future, and make sure you always speak truth to power. Thank you.
