Advanced Qualitative Data Analysis
Page 1 of 2 Advanced Qualitative Data Analysis
©2012 Argosy University Online Programs
Argosy University, DC Commencement Ceremony 2009 Speaker: Please be seated. Graduating class of 2009, faculty, staff, distinguished guests, family, and friends, I welcome you to the 2009 commencement ceremony of Argosy University, Washington DC. Our theme this year is Sustaining Ourselves, Securing Our Future. We’ve heard much in recent months and years about sustainability. Most of the public discussion has focused on the quality of our environment and our use and misuse of natural resources. Yet, sometimes in the midst of this needed dialogue, the sustainability of the individuals is overlooked. In this more modest but most relevant dialogue, sustainability is about balance. Many of you have been grappling with balance in your lives—balance among personal, family, work, school and community interests, and obligations. For you the class of 2009, options for family, career, and community involvement are many and diverse, and opportunity is for both competition and collaboration with others innumerable. In this world of both dizzy impossibility and danger, inundated by mostly undifferentiated mass of information and opinion, what will you do next? With a nod to Jim Collins, I recommend that you find and magnify the convergence of something you care deeply about, something you are really good at, and something that has value to others; because of your disciplined acquisition and application of new skills and expertise at Argosy, you’re more capable than ever before. And by channeling your passion whatever it might be into something as value to others, you will be securing a future bright with accomplishments, contributions, career opportunities, and even joy. Truly sustaining ourselves after all means not only marshaling our personal resources and capabilities to endure come what may, but also finding peace of heart and mind. This peace flows naturally from building a legacy of contribution with efficacy and excellence to better relationships, better families, better communities, better places to work, and a better world. Know who you are and what you stand for. Be proud of the education and training you have earned here at Argosy. Use your newly honed skills and talents to strike a better life balance and secure your future by shaping it to reveal your best self, someone who is an anchor to family, a trusted and trustworthy friend, an innovative and productive contributor to the marketplace, a leader in our increasingly global community. Moderator: Please join me in welcoming Warren Brown. Warren Brown: Thank you very much. Thank you very much and good morning to the graduates and to their families. I hope that you’re all doing well. I want to say congratulations for what you’ve accomplished. You’ve made it to this end of your journey that began with your school and your graduate degrees and now you have the pleasure of reentering the workforce and getting back into the world fulltime and experiencing what I hope you’ll find to be the next step of your journey, the next step which will be, hopefully, very satisfying for you and one that brings you accomplishment and pleasure and fulfillment. I want to make sure that we just acknowledge that graduating and passing on from one step where you’re right now, it’s going to be one of those things it’s happy and it’s full and lots of enjoyment. Today is a day to celebrate. But, what happens tomorrow and getting to the work that begins to be your next step is—it’s hard, it’s difficult. So I think, you have to really be in tune with yourself and it takes time, it takes a lot of
Page 2 of 2 Advanced Qualitative Data Analysis
©2011 Argosy University Online Programs
2
Argosy University, DC: Commencement Ceremony, 2009
practice to get in touch with who you are, to know what it is that you want, to figure out what it is that’s speaking from inside of you. But as you discover that or uncover that and let that out, and practice it; I think everything in your world becomes better. You understand more of what you want and you can pursue that. Your happiness and your ability to support other people, it makes your world better and everyone else surrounding your world and community benefits from it. Everybody else here can benefit from it and it goes for not just a graduate, but for everyone in the room. We all know that we need to look to understand ourselves better and what we want from ourselves so that we can contribute to our community and that’s what we’re here for, it makes our time worthwhile and hopefully and I imagine it, on the way we’ll have some fun. So I want to say congratulations because what you’ve done is definitely an accomplishment. Your journey is now beginning again or taking a turn, but it’s not over. You’re kind of one lap. You’re going have to continue to go round and round and it’s going to get harder each time because you’re already putting effort and if you just do the same amount of effort well then that’s not hard. It’s not hard enough. I want you to push yourself, others around you, push for truth, push to do better, to be more efficient, to be smarter, to be more sustainable, to work better with yourselves and with other people so that you can accomplish what is that you set out to do. Together, everyone can contribute and we can all get to a better place, this country, this community, this world. We all need to do our part; we know that it will be enjoyable. It can be enjoyable, but it is up to you to take the risks to get there. So congratulations. Best of luck! Speaker: It’s now my pleasure to congratulate Argosy University, Washington DC’s graduating class of 2009. Congratulations to you all!
