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Feature Fall 2006 Winter 2006 Winter 2015
It’s good to be back at BYU. There’s not another campus in the world that I have visited half as often as BYU. For many years, EY has been the number one employer of BYU students, and most years BYU has been the number one source of candidates for EY. It’s a wonderful two-way relationship.
It seems like only a few years ago that I sat where you are sitting. I was an English major, and that meant that I liked reading and writing. It also meant that I had no idea what I was going to do with my career.
The Sound of Music swept the box office, Martin Luther King Jr. led thousands to Alabama’s capital, and the first commercial satellite launched into orbit. The year was 1965, and the BYU MPA students of the inaugural class were collecting their diplomas and preparing to embody the credo “Enter to learn; go forth to serve.”
It added a slice of humor to Cherie Jones’ day when a co-worker spilled an entire Big Gulp on her keyboard. “I was totally laughing,” she recalls. Her co-worker wasn’t. Jones, a 2001 MAcc graduate and business tax auditor for Loudon County, Virginia, says her colleague panicked as she searched for napkins to salvage the keyboard. Big Gulp or deli sandwich, Jones’ co-worker isn’t the only one whose workstation doubles as an eatery.
At all levels of government, we need more men and women who are willing to speak the truth, face the facts, take a long-term perspective, and prepare our country and its citizens. Many of these challenges are unprecedented in size, scope, complexity, and potential impact.
David Truscott is a do-it-yourself kind of guy. The Washington state native builds his own furniture, does his own home remodeling, and handcrafts violins that fetch upward of $3,000 apiece. What’s more, the violin maker and auditor recently developed an international supply chain that is expected to boost instrument production to nearly $250,000 this year. Not bad for a twenty-four-year-old.
It wasn’t love at first sight when Mike Ward saw the fixer-upper on an overgrown lot in La Canada, a suburb of Los Angeles. But behind the weeds, worn siding, and faded paint, he saw something that intrigued him: potential.
I am truly honored and delighted to be here with you on this joyous occasion. This ceremony is called commencement because you are about to commence, or begin, the next stage in your lives. Up to this point most of what you have done is prepare.