“Making Change Your Mission” A Worn Out Message

By Kira Nightingale

On November 9, students gathered in the campus chapel for the 23rd annual Fall Convocation. First year students shouted for joy upon realizing that this was their last FYE activity, and cried upon realizing that it was yet another hour (that is, it was scheduled for an hour) of someone “older and wiser” talking at them from a podium.

As I sat down in the hot, cramped chapel with my stomach angrily yelling, “Hey, 11:30 is lunchtime — feed me,” I had flashbacks to the week of orientation in which 75% of my time was spent being talked at about things I had heard enough times to be able to recite them in my sleep. I instantly got a migraine. Why now, in early November, must I still be required to attend FYE events? Why now, as a college student, must I still have people constantly telling me how important it is to “believe in yourself and make a difference in the world?” And why now, at 11:30, am I sitting in the chapel instead of Servo?

The answer is simple. I, a first year student who has been volunteering since I could walk, am simply not doing enough. Lucky for me, Robert L. E. Egger, a self-proclaimed “almost high school dropout” was there to show me the error of my ways.

Unfortunately, Mr. Egger is not the first person to lecture me about what I need to be doing to make the world a better place. Ever since I can remember, I have been told to help others, make a difference, and never give up. In fact, if I had a dollar for every motivational speaker who spoke on the same topic as Mr. Egger, I would be way too rich to have to use this cliché. Society in general seems to have an obsession with ramming the “make a difference” message into our heads. The walls of every educational facility in the country are plastered with images of runners or mountain climbers with captions that say “perseverance” or “determination.” Emails with emotional stories and a life lesson are passed from email account to email account like the common cold in a first-year dorm. If Gettysburg College wanted a speaker to hold my attention, they should have chosen a speaker with a new and different message. Because regardless of whether or not I agreed with what Mr. Egger had to say, the fact is that his message has been worn out.

With past speakers like the author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou, and Douglas Wilder, the first African American to be elected as Governor of a US state, one wonders what exactly was going on in the minds of this year’s Fall Convocation Committee. All I can hope is that next year’s Fall Convocation Committee will decide on a speaker that students will truly want to listen to.