After four years of studying, stressing and contributing to research publications, Lijana Teague had one more challenge to undertake before graduating from Valparaiso University.
And as she stood before her fellow graduates and the hundreds of their family members and friends in the school’s Athletic Center Saturday morning after beating out several other students for the chance to be the student keynote commencement speaker, she issued her first challenge to her younger brother, Lance Teague.
“I’d like to see my little brother beat this Mother’s Day present,” she said to the crowd’s delight.
VU matriculated 575 undergraduates and 183 masters candidates over the course of two ceremonies. Though those students may think they’re set with their life plans, keynote speaker Mark Anderson, executive vice president for medical affairs, dean of the Division of the Biological Sciences, and dean of the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago, cautioned them to not get too comfortable, because “comfortable” doesn’t always mean “right.”
“What seems easy might not feel right, and sometimes, the right path won’t feel right until you start walking it,” Anderson said. “I see young people here who can’t wait to reach for their future, so whatever you decide to do, look after each other.”
To put a finer point on that, Anderson recalled a time during school when his adviser fell ill and died. He’d understood how to pull the data he was working on, but he had no idea how to put it together in the way he needed until a nurse in physiology who helped him “weave it together” when she didn’t have to help him at all.
The woman remains a great friend and mentor to him to this day, he said.
“There isn’t a milestone I’ve reached where I haven’t reached out to her to let her know,” Anderson said. “Health care and science are team sports, and nurses are the glue.”
Teague, of Olathe, Kansas, who graduated high school early and took a gap year before choosing VU as her school, said VU wasn’t the first school nor the last school she toured. What set it apart for her was the small student to faculty ratio, even if it meant that every one of her teachers knew when she was absent.
Acknowledging that her class was one that went through all the changes the pandemic wrought, the memories they made there would last them a lifetime and have shaped them into more than they might be thinking now.
“We are more than our majors and field of study,” she said.
Lijana Teague’s mother, Tjasha Teague, had a different idea for her daughter growing up but couldn’t be more proud of what she became.
“She was reading and writing at such a young age, I thought she was going to be a lawyer,” her mom said. “She has a tremendous amount of empathy.”
VU President Jose Padilla told the students that if they live to see 80, the 5% of their lives they spent at the school will be some of the most impactful, consequential years of their lives. They’ll always have the friends they made here, and they’ll always remember the professors who cheered them on in some way.
And if that weren’t enough, there will always be VU’s “social contract attached to their hips.”
“You are servant leaders, because you know it’s not only you; it’s your brothers and sisters. Like the Three Musketeers, it’s ‘All for one and one for all,’ and God help anyone who underestimates any one of us. We got your back.”
Michael Hazboun, of Jordan, spent much of the pandemic back in Jordan, taking his first-semester classes 8 hours ahead of his classmates. Once, he finished a final at 4 a.m., he said as his family — mom Lina, dad Kamal, and brothers Johny and Antonio — beamed.
It’s all worth it as he heads to the University of Minnesota for grad school for organizational psychology.
“It’s good that our boys got a good education because they’ll bring it back home (to Jordan),” Lina Hazboun said.
“In only another five years,” Michael Hazboun said, laughing.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
