Parting words for the Class of Spring ’18

By Donna Lindell, Professor & Coordinator

Yesterday I stood in front of my public relations students in  my Communications Management II class for the last time….final class is Thursday with a test. At the end of the class, there was a long, noticeable silence. It was the space students were giving me to give them my final parting words, final advice or a giant verbal hug before they leave the nest into the big world of paid — non ‘zero budget’ — work.

Thing is, I’m terrible at these verbal group good-byes. I tried last  year by reading off something I wrote and couldn’t even make it through the first sentence without breaking down.

But I can’t let you all go without saying something from the heart. This year, more so than any other, has been a tough one…on staff and faculty. Five weeks of strike left us all feeling a bit more anxious and vulnerable. This year I taught Events and got to know you all in ways well beyond the lessons taught on a Powerpoint. I got to see you grow not just as professional PRs but as humans as you learned to navigate through your own strengths and shortcomings in stressful situations, group work, and assignments upon assignments, each one asking you to be better than the last one. Many of you were not from Canada, or from this area, and in addition to navigating through a tough, demanding program, had to navigate through a new city and/or a new country and culture. I admire you all for what you have accomplished, for your perseverance, for leaving yourselves open to learning lessons you weren’t expecting to learn.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say I — and your faculty — aren’t as anxious as you are right now about starting this next chapter of your life. As you near the end of the semester, we, as faculty, are stressed and fretting whether or not our students are ready. Have we taught them well? Will they represent us well? Will they succeed? Have they learned anything? Sometimes at this stage, when we see errors or lack of attention to detail or empty seats in the classroom, we want to strangle someone. It feels like our souls are being destroyed, one careless mistake at a time, one skipped class at at a time.

And that’s because we care. We care deeply. We care about your learning and about your success. We love seeing you land that job, get promoted. We love watching you find love, get married, start families. We love having you as ambassadors of our program. We care.

Don’t ever forget that.

Now, you care.

And that is my final parting advice: care. Care about the quality of work that you produce because the quality of the work speaks to the quality of the person. Care about the kind of person you are and need to be, about the quality of person you present to others. Care about others: your colleagues,  your boss, your clients, your friends, your family, your partner, your community, your world.

It all matters. Care.

–DL