Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.

Yesterday I went to a MILE meeting. MILE is a leadership program here at the University of Memphis dedicated to creating future leaders. I should also mention something that was not pointed out to myself, it is dedicated to creating future Memphis leaders. Seeing how my primary backing as a Hospitality is, well, travel some, and get the heck out of here. Nothing against Memphis. Really and truly, nothing against Memphis anymore. I have learned to love my city, but, really, it has been too long. It will have been over twenty-two years here after graduation and I would say that I have done my time. I should have known there was a reason I was the only Hospitality major in the room.
Back to MILE.
Last night our speaker was Chris Crouch. A super interesting and charismatic guy who really love to read. And I'm not talking Shakespeare. I mean I love my fair share of beautifully written lit, but I have really taken to the more useful side of books lately. Throughout his entire presentation, he continued to mention great books that sounded incredibly relevant to me. For once. I think that is definitely a flaw of our English teachers of today. Again, I love reading for the sake of "going somewhere" or "creating a scene" or discovering hidden meaning, but there is a heavy unbalance of this in our schools, both private and public. A lot of youth simply are in touch with that, and that is okay. Why can't we provide more relevant and current reading? One of my favorite books from high school was written within the last five years, well, last five years from the time I had read it. And it wasn't one of these watered down chick books or teeny novels. It was a book on finance. It was Financial Peace, by Dave Ramsey. See, I remembered BOTH the title and author. Although I loved Fahrenheit 451, I could never tell you who wrote it after I had the quiz. It doesn't matter when you have Google anyway. (It was Ray Bradbury by the way. I googled.)
Books like Freakonomics, and Outliers, would show our youth a different side of the world. Teach them to read deeper outside of the artsy way. He mentioned the latter last night by the way. He goes on to say that the people who write these books spend years researching and/or living some way and figure out the best or worst way to do something and he can save himself all those years and squeeze them into a couple of nights.
What a cool notion.
Also in his speech, he showed a video that really rang true to me last night. He showed the above clip of Sanford's graduation ceremony. Steve Jobs spoke to them. Lucky son of a guns. I guess, if anything, you get a cool graduation speaker for all that money! It really showed him in a different light. I love listening to graduation ceremony's. These incredible leaders, who have been through so much, get to tell people who are about to go out into the world a little bit of what to do and not do so they live with no regrets and enjoy every moment possible.
They are always so profound.
From there I went straight to a Volunteer Appreciation dinner from A Night of Southern Elegance. As the people began to chit chat and enjoy some delicious food, I began to notice how alike we all were, yet different at the same time. There was a place for everyone at this event. And for them to be thankful enough to host a dinner for us meant the world to me. It makes me wonder why I don't do these things more often.
I met an incredible person there, Cheryl Haas, who is such an inspiring event planner and "home stager." I openly admitted to having no idea what a home stager was. Apparently there is a need in the world to "spruce" up an empty or horrific home to help it to sell. She often has offers to buy some of the furniture, too! This need is big enough that she has a warehouse to store her furniture. Who knew!? Talking to her as well as these other volunteers, I realized that most were successful and busy people in their careers, but still took the time out of their personal lives to plan such a huge event.
I really need to stop complaining about how busy I am.
I need to volunteer more.
Steve Jobs ends his speech with "Stay hungry, Stay foolish."
Maybe I am too careful. I don't take enough risks. I will still graduate with a B in my classes. Whether or not I am happy or involved is up to me.

On that note, we will be trick or treating for Camp Good Grief tomorrow in the early evening. If you have any leftover Halloween candy, please take the time to drop it by the Holiday Inn at the University of Memphis. We are using it to create a gingerbread house village to be on display at the Botanic Gardens during the holiday season, with proceeds to benefit Camp Good Grief.