Opportunities of a Lifetime

             In the last week, I have had the opportunity to see the man that discovered the Titanic speak, Bill Clinton and got to help students see what they are passionate about in their major. As this semester is winding down, I’m amazed at how busy I was and how I even made it out alive.

            Seeing Dr. Robert Ballard speak was an honor. As someone who used to want to be a marine biologist (that worked out huh?), I was intrigued about his story and how he got involved into what he loved doing. He spoke to us briefly about the Titanic but also his other discoveries, which included ancient Mariner ships, The Yorktown and The Bismark. The thing I got most from his talk was to follow your dreams. He set out to find the Titanic and he did, along with so much more

            President Clinton was the speaker on Tuesday night. He spoke in front of about 5,000 people from Amarillo and Canyon here in our First United Bank Center. For a small school like WT, having a former president come is incredible. Actually, this was the second time this has happened in 102 years. Clinton’s speech was about a lot of subjects including the memorial of flight United 93, healthy food in schools and farming resources.

            My favorite part of the night was towards the end of his speech.  Clinton touched on how everybody is 99.5% water. We are all 99.5% the same, the only thing that differentiates us is our skin color, hair, eyes, personality, etc.  He wanted to highlight the fact that we all have the opportunity to make a difference and at one point he referenced the younger crowd saying that we are the ones that have the most influence on society. We hear this a lot from parents, teachers and friends but coming from such a loved leader in our country, it meant a lot.  Having both of these speakers at WT was such a great opportunity that I am glad I was able to take.

            This week, our Buffalo Advertising team was invited to go to the Midland Advertising federation to present. We had previously presented to the Amarillo Advertising Federation, which was amazing. Going to the Midland performance, we were all tired and it was a three and a half hour drive for our 20 minute presentation. I don’t think we all realized though, how humbling this trip would be. We arrived and were graciously greeted by the head of their federation. The room was set up nice and they wanted to accommodate to whatever we needed. We gave our presentation over lunch to a room of about 50 people. At the end, we could tell some of the students from Midland College or the high school had never seen anything like that. One boy asked “Why didn’t you win first?” and another question was “Are you all employed?” Our answer: No, but we would like to be! We got a few laughs for that one.

            They all commended us on our presentation and we got asked a few questions by some of the older members in the crowd which we have been so nicely trained to answer by our advisors. The real joy came when we were able to just kind of take our jackets off and talk with these students. They were hesitant to come up to us but once they did we realized that they looked up to us. There were four girls and one guy who were talking to us. Most of these students wanted to pursue a career in Mass Communications. They had questions and comments about our futures and us and mentioned how passionate we all seemed about what we did: and we are just that, passionate.  To all of us, this was very humbling. During the semester, things are moving so fast that we don’t realize the opportunity that we were presented with to be able to work on this campaign and to be able to present. To me, that has been the biggest honor. Presenting to people like the AAF and Midland makes all the hard work; tears and late nights come together for something bigger than just the presentation. They say you don’t realize how good everything is until it’s gone. I must say, with the Midland Advertising performance being our last one until we find out about nationals, it’s bittersweet. If you asked me if I would go and do this semester over again, I ‘d say yes. It was all worth it.