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“It is strange to use the word ‘commencement’ to describe finishing your UW-Eau Claire degree,” Carney says. “But if you believe your future is bigger than your past, and I hope you do, college commencement is the perfect way to begin your future.”

For the 680 graduates and their guests in the Sonnentag Event Center, Carney reiterated his advice of recent years to all incoming students during Welcome Week. He asked those first-year students to “promise themselves that they’ll do three things during their time at UW-Eau Claire.”

Those three things were:

• To dive deep into harvesting their talents — to find out just how good they are at the things they already do well.
• To invest in something they know nothing about — a class, a club, an internship or a project.
• To establish at least one meaningful connection with a faculty or staff member, someone who can be a lifelong mentor and friend.

“Graduates, as you look back at your time at UW-Eau Claire, I hope you can put mental checkmarks next to each of those promises,” Carney says.

In closing, Carney emphasized a concept he has coined as the “abnormal” side of UW-Eau Claire — abnormal, maybe, but in all the right ways.

“I can say confidently that this place is abnormal,” Carney says. “We are abnormally committed to helping students succeed. People who attend other universities have literally called what we do unfair. We just call it The Blugold Experience.”

‘Charge to the Class’

Caroline Welch, a 1974 UW-Eau Claire psychology graduate and CEO of Mind Your Brain Inc., delivered the traditional “Charge to the Class” at today’s commencement ceremony.

Welch spoke to the graduates about the importance of being “truly present” in each moment of our lives, a practice the longtime mindfulness practitioner, author and attorney says allows curiosity to “expand horizons and open doors” we may not otherwise see.

Welch shared several anecdotes of her rural Wisconsin upbringing, along with college tales of waitressing jobs, forensics tournaments, a semester exchange at Grambling State University in Louisiana and an eventual three-year job teaching English in Japan — all opportunities she took because she was curious to know more.

“I didn’t think I’d ever use my Japanese skills again, but 15 years later when I began my law practice, 90% of my clients were based in Japan,” Welch says.

In one more key moment of curiosity, Welch says she answered a call about a potential new television show that needed an attorney on staff. She did not know much about entertainment law, but did the interview out of curiosity.

“That show was ‘Judge Judy,’ which went on to enjoy a 25-year run on the air,” Welch says. “When we are present in the moment, our curiosity flourishes and leads us to amazing, winding paths we’d never have otherwise considered.”