The Valpo Core Reader
 

Document Type

Freshman Seminar Essay

Publication Date

1997

Excerpt

As I stand here today, I face you as your newly elected leader. I am anxious to look toward our future with hope, but I can't help but look back to the men and to the experiences that shaped this great country. I think about what the great men who preceded me said to you the people, on this important day, and I realized that they all focused on what had shaped their lives. They looked back to the American Revolution, to the Civil War, to the lives of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Thomas Jefferson. With this realization, I have decided to focus on the things that shaped my world. My first thoughts are of my parents and my teachers. I think of my early schooling and the impact that it had on my impressionable mind. I recall one event more clearly than all of the rest. I remember exactly where I was and how I felt on one fateful day in 1986. I was in third grade, so young, but it was a day that changed my view of America forever. The entire elementary school had been crowded into the multipurpose room where a huge television was set to show the launch of the space shuttle Challenger. We all watched in anticipation as seven heroes boarded the shuttle full of hope and excitement. Then, we watched in horror as the shuttle exploded in a ball of flame just minutes after takeoff. The silence in the room was chilling. All of America seemed to come to a halt; the same silence that was felt in our multipurpose room was echoed throughout the nation. The Challenger mission had been a wonderful dream, but it died for much of America when the shuttle exploded. As I stand before you now, I challenge you to renew the dream of the Challenger.

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