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Saturday, May 20, 2006 

Dr. Shirley McDonald and Dick Cheney

Posted by: Bradley McDonald

Dr. Mom
I would like to publicly recognize my mother, who received her PhD today from LSU in Education Leadership, Research and Counseling. She worked long and hard on her dissertation and to be able to complete it with everything else going on in her life at the time was quite amazing. Congratulations, Mom!

VP
I attended the graduation ceremony and the speaker was none other than our Vice President of the US, Dick Cheney. Cheney was as good of a speaker as you would expect from someone in his position.

He started off his speech by connecting with students on a personal level, mentioning places dear to all LSU students and alumni. Mentioning sports, he brought up the 2003 Co-National Champions football team at LSU and then quickly added after the applause died down, "Around here I imagine you dropped the 'Co'." That remark, which seemed ad-libbed, received a bigger ovation.

The speech was fairly humorous and short, which was appreciated by those of us with empty stomachs. Two main points stuck out in my mind after his speech: "Be able to adapt to change" and "don't be afraid of failure."

Cheney menioned that his college career began at Yale, but didn't end there because he dropped out after a few semesters. "Actually" he said, "dropped out isn't quite accurate -- 'asked to leave' would be more like it. Twice. The second time around, they said, don't bother coming back."

Looking Back
David and I worked together in college at a campus job in an old converted dorm room in Tiger Stadium. Every semester on graduation day, we would push one of the windows open and watch the graduates prance happily to the ceremony. It served well as motivation. (Yeah, and we were scoping out all the southern belles.) Hard to believe it's been five years since that was me prancing happily to the ceremony.

Very cool. got a picture of Dr. Mom?

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